


a call to courage

by conclusions (introductions)



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Childhood Friends, Friends to Lovers, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Making Out, Mutual Pining, Neck Kissing, Pining, Summer, a coming out...of sorts?, better tag it as, minor suffering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-14 16:14:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19276867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/introductions/pseuds/conclusions
Summary: being someone's best friend for years, mark learns, means most things stay the same.the key word here beingmost, because there's always an exception when it comes to lee donghyuck.alternatively: the sun turns donghyuck gold, and mark discovers that the hardest truths to face are often the most important ones.





	a call to courage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [excelgesis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/excelgesis/gifts).



> this fic is for [chel](https://twitter.com/excelgesis), who deserves the whole world and all the happiness in it. but since i can't give you that, please humbly accept this fic instead. you're fantastic. thank you for everything. i seriously mean it so much i WILL cry. that is a threat. i love you so much. 
> 
> so without further ado--please enjoy!!!

The end of Mark’s first year of college is marked by Lee Donghyuck’s dramatic arrival back home. The story, as Renjun tells him with an exasperated look on his face, goes something along the lines of Donghyuck stepping off the bus with all his bags and immediately making a scene by vaulting through the doors, scattering his shit everywhere, and tackling both Jaemin and Jeno (who were waiting for him, signs and all) to the ground. Renjun, who’d been waiting in the car, had dropped them off at Jaemin’s place and had come straight to the convenience store Mark’s family owned, claiming that he needed a break from all of them before he got a headache.

Mark barely looks up from his cell phone, where he’s got more pressing matters—the girl he’d been sort of casually seeing (they’d been on two dates) is apologizing to him because he’s not her type even though he’s been very sweet.

“Sounds like typical Donghyuck,” Mark says to Renjun, turning off his phone and placing it face-down next to the cash register. He can’t even work up the energy to be disappointed, he’s so burnt-out from school. Plus, he sort of got the feeling it wasn’t going to work out. Things like this rarely do, especially in his case.

“Coming from you, that’s something,” Renjun comments, “since you guys haven’t talked in what, two years? Three?”

“Almost three,” Mark says. Behind Renjun, the bell above the door jingles as a couple of bored-looking girls come in, browsing through the chips.

“Ah, right,” Renjun says, remembering. “He ditched you at the beginning of junior year for musical theater and the, uh—”

“The tennis club,” Mark says. His phone buzzes again, and he gives it a tired look.

“Right,” Renjun replies. He steps out of the way to let the girls come up to the counter. “Oh, before I forget,” he continues as Mark begins to ring up bags of chips, “there’s a party on Friday to celebrate his return, or something. You should come.”

“Five-thousand won,” Mark tells the girls, who drop a couple crumpled bills onto the counter. He turns to Renjun as the cash register dings open. “I dunno. It’s not really—”

“Your scene?”

Mark shrugs. “You said it, not me.”

“Up to you,” Renjun says, raising his eyebrows, “but you really should stop by. Everyone will be glad to see you, since you practically disappeared on us during finals week.”

“I was busy.” Mark closes the register drawer and gives a smile to the girls on their way out. They ignore him.

“Didn’t say you weren’t,” Renjun defends, putting up his hands.

Mark’s phone buzzes again, and his head throbs with an oncoming headache. “I’ll think about it.”

“That’s all I ask,” Renjun says, and picks his backpack up off the ground, swinging it onto his shoulders. “I’ve got some work to catch up on, but I’ll see you later, okay?”

“Can you pick me up?” Mark asks. “I work at the docks until eleven.”

Renjun wrinkles his nose. “Your house isn’t far.”

Mark opens his mouth to argue, but Renjun lifts a hand, looking resigned. “Fine. But only because you’re my best friend.”

“Thanks, dude,” Mark says, and Renjun rolls his eyes. “No, I mean it, you’re awesome.”

“Whatever,” Renjun tosses over his shoulder as he heads towards the door, bell jingling behind him.

The shop is fairly busy for the next couple hours—summers are like that, and Mark’s glad for it, since it cuts the monotony of standing behind the counter down by a lot. He doesn’t get paid—he’s tried to ask his dad for money, but had quickly been reprimanded with things like _don’t be ungrateful_ and _I already do so much for you_ —so it often feels like he’s just wasting his time, standing and scanning chips. Which he sort of is, if he thinks about it too much. His sister comes back from cram school around six, setting her massive stack of homework down on the counter and taking Mark’s spot with a disgruntled look.

“Oppa, you know how much work I have,” she whines. “Can’t you sit for at least another hour, _please?”_

“I would,” Mark says, “but Taeil really needs help down on the docks. Apparently there was a huge windstorm last night.”

She scowls, plopping down in the chair behind the desk. “Why do you even like those stupid fish anyway?”

“Those stupid fish,” Mark says, changing his nice shoes out for his work boots, “are the reason why this town still exists.”

“And tourism,” she adds, but her face smooths out as she recognizes Mark’s point. “Not that I really care if this place goes into economic depression or not. I’m getting out of here as soon as possible.” She pats her stack of homework. “That’s what cram school’s for.”

“So you can escape to SKY and go kiss boys,” Mark says, snickering when his sister turns bright pink.

“Do _not_ say that around Dad,” she hisses. “Get out of here. I remember why we never do shifts together, and it’s because you’re an asshole.”

“Dad would like to hear you say that too,” Mark says, fully aware he’s making the situation worse. His sister’s ears reach max redness, and he makes a break for the door before she can kick him or throw a can of soda at him—both of which have happened before.

“You—” She starts, fuming, but a customer steps up the counter and Mark takes the chance to leave.

The sun is still out, but the sky is starting to turn a deeper blue as night creeps in. The cicadas roar loudly in his ears, and the humidity has lifted just enough for Mark to feel the cool breeze coming from the sea. He hefts his backpack higher on his back and makes his way east towards the water. Kids play out front in lawns, and he can hear noise spilling from restaurants as he walks.

Taeil works at a fishery, monitoring aquatic life and making sure they’re not accidentally infecting everything with toxins. He’s recently been working on restoring a type of kelp—or maybe algae—once-native to the area. Mark isn’t technically smart enough to be an actual intern (his bio grades were abysmal, and he fell asleep in his environmental science classes last semester) but Taeil likes him, and so he comes every now and then as a janitor/repairman/dockworker. Essentially, if something needs cleaning or fixing, Mark’s got it handled.

Taeil is soaking wet when Mark finds him the recesses of the fishery, frantically flipping through notebooks.

“Whoa, hyung,” Mark says, stopping short when he sees the massive welt on Taeil’s cheek, “what happened?”

“Hi, Mark-ah,” Taeil says, straightening. “A wooden pallet fell on me on my way to the shed and knocked me into the water.”

“Ooh, ouch,” Mark says, wincing sympathetically. “Does it hurt a lot?”

“No, it’s fine,” Taeil replies, waving him off. “Are you here to clean the back out?”

“Yeah, you made it seem like it was urgent,” Mark says, dropping his stuff in the metal storage locker.

“Sort of,” Taeil says, turning back to his notes. “There’s another windstorm coming, apparently, and I don’t want stuff to get worse.”

“No problem, hyung,” Mark says, grabbing his work gloves and trying to remember where he’d put the big trash bins. “Do you want it all thrown out?”

Taeil thinks about it. “Yukhei is around. He’ll know what stuff to keep better than I do.”

“Sounds good.”

Taeil gives him a broad smile, picking up one of his notebooks. “Thank you so much, Mark-ah. You’re the best. Come by later and I’ll show you how I’m monitoring tuna populations.”

Mark nods, salutes, and heads out back. The wind’s whipped up a giant mess: a ton of trash from the nearby beaches, pieces from the dilapidated storage shed Mark still needs to fix, empty barrels and wooden pallets, and soggy sheets of notes in Taeil’s handwriting.

The sea stretches out in front of him, a great, rolling sheet of blue that seems to go on forever. The sun glimmers gold above it, and Mark closes his eyes and breathes in for a minute, enjoying the distant sounds of the street and the briny smell of the air.

Yukhei is quick to ruin his peace, clapping Mark on the shoulder so hard Mark stumbles and nearly cracks his head open. Yukhei finds this enormously amusing, and as a result, that gets Mark laughing too and it’s at least five minutes before they can catch their breath and find the big garbage bins.

“I was going to use them for a water quality test,” Yukhei says as they lug the plastic bins over, “but after that wind, I sorta guessed Taeil-hyung would put you on clean-up duty.” Yukhei grins widely. “Smart of me, right?”

“Sure,” Mark says, even though it’s more common sense than intelligence. And he says that out loud too for good measure, because Yukhei is the dumbest smart person Mark has ever met, something that constantly makes him laugh.

They start with the trash first, picking up all of the random stuff that’s made it way to the fishery. When that’s done—quickly, thankfully, since the yard isn’t that big, they move on to the scaffolding and wooden pallets.

“I can’t believe you got into marine biology,” Mark comments as Yukhei rattles on about algae and pollution and currents. “You literally almost got killed by that barrel.”

Yukhei gives said barrel—which he’d tripped over, and been forced to catch himself on the poop-covered railing—a kick. “Stupid barrel,” he says. “Hey, go grab that tank over there. I’m afraid it’ll break if I leave it there for another storm.”

Mark has to dig through some wet newspapers and a couple meters of knotted fishing line to get to it, and even then, he can barely lift it. He almost throws his back out the first time he lifts it, but the second time, fingers slipping dangerously over the glass, he stumbles upright. “Where do you want this, Yukhei?”

“Uh, there’s a cart over there you can drop it on,” Yukhei says, pointing a little ways away. “I’ve got a spot.”

Mark mutters a few swear words under his breath, hefting the tank a bit higher in his arms. He’s sweating a little bit despite the cool breeze, and can feel his shirt sticking to his back.

There’s a sensation on the back of his neck, like someone’s watching, and then comes a voice, familiar and teasing:

“Need some help?”

Surprised, Mark drops the tank on the cart. He winces at the heavy _thud_ it makes and hopes he hasn’t broken it. He turns, and sure enough, there’s Donghyuck, standing on the steps down to the fishery in all of his glory. He looks different, Mark thinks, and it’s not just because he’s dressing in a new way, or his hair is dyed two shades lighter than it was in high school.

Mark is suddenly very aware of his messy hair, sweaty face and work clothes. Donghyuck, on the other hand, looks like he’d just stepped out of some sort of fashion magazine, the kinds his sister steals from the store to keep in her backpack.

“I’ve got it,” Mark replies, neutral. He doesn’t bother to close any of the space—he’s not sure why Donghyuck’s _here,_ of all places, when they haven’t talked in years. “Thanks, though.”

Donghyuck leans a hip against the railing, nodding at the docks. “Jaemin told me you’d be here,” he says by way of explanation. “I wanted to come say hi.”

“I hope you had a safe trip from Seoul,” Mark says, squatting to adjust the tank on the cart. “It’s a long bus ride.”

“It was fine,” Donghyuck says. “The flight to New York was longer.”

It’s a baited question. The natural response, Mark thinks, would be for him to ask about New York, and then that would lead into school and life and inevitably the last couple years. But why? For what? The distance that formed between him and Donghyuck was natural and relatively painless—Mark used to miss him pretty bad every now and then, when they’d pass each other in the hallway or hang out in a group together. But now it’s fine. What’s done is done. The wound has been cauterized, so to speak—not that there was ever really a wound in the first place.

“Why are you here?” Mark asks casually, trying not to come off defensive or accusing. “It’s sort of a long walk from your house. You should’ve just swung by the store.”

Donghyuck smiles. “Was gonna. But then I figured it would be too late, and you’d be in bed or something.”

“Dude, it’s only nine,” Mark points out, laughing, and Donghyuck gives him a sheepish look.

“Okay, point taken,” Donghyuck replies. “I wanted to find you to ask if you’d come to my party on Friday.”

Mark braces his arms against the cart handle. “Renjun mentioned that.”

Donghyuck brightens immediately. “He did? I didn’t think he would, since I took too long as the bus station and he got yelled at by a traffic cop.” Donghyuck takes a couple steps down, moving so he’s in the light. His hair is different enough that it’s throwing Mark off. “So, you’re in? You’re gonna come?”

“I have to think about it,” Mark says, and Donghyuck’s face falls just a little. Mark feels a tiny squeeze in his chest at his pout, just enough to make him feel guilty and amend, “but I’d like to. I’ll have to talk to Taeil-hyung.”

“Taeil?” Donghyuck says. “Who used to help us with bio? He runs this place now?”

“Yeah,” Mark replies. “His yard’s a mess, so—”

“I’ll text him right now and ask,” Donghyuck interrupts, whipping out his phone. “He likes me.”

“No, you really don’t—” Mark says desperately, but Donghyuck, once in motion, is only ever stopped by extreme force. And Mark doesn’t have it in him to shout, not when it’s summer and he’s just gotten back from a whole year away from home.  

“Talk to him in person, too,” Donghyuck insists, thumbs flying, “but he says there shouldn’t be an issue for Friday, especially if you come in tomorrow night and repair the gutter.” Donghyuck looks up. “You fix stuff?”

“Yeah,” Mark says, because it’s easier than doing the whole self-deprecation thing about how he’s not smart enough. “Maintenance, cleaning, all that.”

“Cool,” Donghyuck replies, and they lapse back into awkward silence as neither of them can find anything worth talking about. “Well, I’ll see you Friday, then? We were thinking nine for pregame, if you wanna come, but otherwise…ten?”

“Sure,” Mark agrees, resigned to his fate. “I’ll see what Renjun’s plan is and probably come with him.”

Donghyuck smiles. “Okay, then, I’ll be off,” he says, and gives Mark a small wave. “Good luck with cleaning.”

Mark, panicking a bit, gives Donghyuck an awkward thumbs up and immediately regrets his whole existence when Donghyuck laughs. But he returns the gesture, so maybe their friendship is in better shape than Mark thinks.

He lingers at the stairs for a minute longer, watching Donghyuck and his white sneakers disappear beyond the streetlights. Then Yukhei calls his name, and Donghyuck doesn’t cross his mind for the rest of the night.

 

* * *

 

Thursday night, Mark watches a Youtube video on how to fix gutters, and then climbs on top of the fishery and spends a few hours whacking at things with a hammer until a massive clump of leaves comes loose, clearing the gutter out. Taeil thanks him with tears in his eyes (it’d been dripping in his office for months now) and pays him in advance. Mark walks back feeling immensely satisfied, and spends the next day taunting his sister with it until she kicks him in the gut and gets them both grounded when they knock over the counter display of keychains in the shop.

By the time Thursday rolls around, the anxiety is in full-force, rolling around his his stomach like a bunch of loose marbles. He spends a few minutes digging around in his closet for something to wear, but gives it up quickly when he notices how agitated it’s making him.

“Since when did you care so much?” Jisung asks from where he’s lying on Mark’s bed, phone held above him.

“How did you get in here?” Mark asks, collapsing in his desk chair and taking a deep breath. “Are you going to be helpful?”

“Your sister let me in, and probably not,” Jisung says, flipping onto his stomach. “I came because I needed advice, but I think you’re in worse shape than I am.”

On his desk, Mark’s phone buzzes. It’s from Renjun, asking if he wants to go pregame with the rest of them.

“Are you going to Donghyuck’s party?” Mark asks Jisung, picking up his phone.

“Mm, maybe,” Jisung says, attention back on his phone. “Chenle’s not feeling super great so I might go over and cheer him up.”

Mark looks back down at Renjun’s text, and his courage fails him all at once.

_don’t think so, have some extra work to do at the shop. see you at 10_

Renjun sends a few angry emojis in response, but lets it go.

“I don’t even know why this feels so weird,” Mark says, kicking against the ground and letting his chair spin.

“Weird how?” Jisung asks. “About you and Donghyuck-hyung?”

“Yeah.” Mark does another circle. “And I don’t know. Just…weird. You know?”

“No.”

“Okay, well, it _is,_ ” Mark insists. “He showed up. We haven’t talked in almost three years, right?”

“Mm.”

“But he’s still, like, friendly,” Mark continues, even though it’s clear Jisung’s not paying attention anymore. “He invited me to this party, and for a second—I don’t know, man. It was weird.”

“Hyung, I think you’re absolutely overthinking this,” Jisung comments. “You’ve said weird three times in the last two minutes.”

“You want me to shut up, don’t you,” Mark says, crossing his arms. “You called me hyung.”

Jisung puts his phone down and gives Mark an exasperated look. “Okay, look. _Maybe_ Donghyuck was being nice because he wants to be friends again. Or he doesn’t want you to feel excluded. Or maybe he missed you, in that nostalgic way that happens to college kids.”

Mark thinks about this for a second. “Yeah, that’s probably more accurate,” he says, and Jisung nods smugly. Some of the tension eases out of Mark, and his anxiety ebbs just enough for him to cross back over to his closet. “I’m overthinking shit.”

“Congrats, hyung,” Jisung says, rolling back over and going back to his phone. “You’ve seen the light.”

Mark ignores him and squints into his closet. Most of the stuff he owns is the same—a rotating selection of faded shorts and t-shirts during the summer, and then the same thing in the winter except with jeans and a heavy raincoat.

Eventually, he decides he’s not going to change, because it’s a lot of effort and he’s fine in what he’s wearing.

He goes down to the shop to tell his dad he’s headed out and catches his sister sitting in the stairwell with her workbook, face tear-streaked. When she sees Mark, though, she ducks and presses her cheek against the wall so he can’t see her.

“Mina,” he starts, but she flaps her workbook at him, still facing away.

“It’s fine,” she mumbles, and Mark squints down at the page of math problems, the numbers making his head spin. “I’ve got it. This is what cram school’s for, right?”

Mark hesitates, not sure what to say. He’d been average in school, was going to the local college, and that was fine with him. But it wasn’t fine for Mina, who’d wanted out of here ever since they’d started visiting Toronto to see their mom.

“Oppa, I promise, I’m fine,” Mina insists, shoving at his legs. “Go to your party. Say hi to your friends for me.”

Mark reluctantly starts back down the stairs, but gets an idea. He does some quick addition—his mom should be up by now—and pulls out his phone.

_Hi mom I know you’re busy but if you could call Mina that would be awesome_

His mom responds a couple minutes later as Mark’s tying his shoes.

_Hi sweetie. Yes. I will call her. Is she okay?_

Mark types out a reply with one hand. _Yeah, she’s fine, just needs some help with math. Don’t tell her I told you though._

His mom sends back a heart emoji, and a couple seconds later, he can hear Mina answer her phone, her voice wavering.

“Dad, I’m going to Jaemin’s house,” Mark says, coming out from the back room. His dad, busy with a customer, lifts a hand in acknowledgement.

“Okay,” he says. “Make sure to behave.”

Mark nods, feeling a little guilty for not telling the whole truth. It’s not necessarily that his father doesn’t trust his friends—he just doesn’t like drinking. Which makes sense, given the number of people that hang around the convenience store drinking soju and beer until two in the morning.

The night is warm, and sun has only just gone down. Mark knows the way to Jaemin’s house by heart—has known it since fifth grade, when he used to go over every single day after school with Donghyuck, where they’d play soccer in Jaemin’s backyard and talk about the girls in their class. High school was a bit different, given how their friend group sort of split, but unlike Donghyuck, Jaemin stuck around for college, allowing them to get close again.

He takes a left at the downtown intersection—singular, because their downtown is so small you can walk it in twenty minutes. There are less than a hundred thousand people living here. Mark knew the majority of his graduating class.

He can hear the music before he’s even there. Jaemin’s mom is probably out of town, off in Shanghai or New York or some place far away, because there is no way she’d even consider letting Jaemin have this many people over. A crowd spills from inside onto the front porch and down the stairs; they mingle in the backyard and in front of the gate, chatting and laughing. Mark stops a few feet away, checking his phone. Everyone, theoretically, is already here—it’ll just be a matter of finding them.

 _i see you !!_ Jeno texts him as he’s about to head up the steps. _come to the backyard!_  

Mark stands on his tip-toes, trying to make out Jeno through the crowds of people. He thinks he can see Jaemin, his hair shiny platinum under the light. Jeno, thankfully, is with him, and they both sling arms around Mark’s shoulders, drunk-swaying and shouting in his ear. Someone hands him a beer, the can slippery with condensation.

“Do you know where Renjun is?” Mark asks Jeno, who leans in closer.

“What?” Jeno shouts.

Mark sighs. “Never mind. I’ll find him later.” He opens his beer, cringing at the taste. It’s lukewarm, too, which doesn’t help.

He sticks near Jaemin and Jeno for a little while, finishing his first beer and then his second, he lets himself breathe out. He chats with people he recognizes—Miyoung from his lit class, Junghoon from his final group project. Jeno hands him a third beer, and then vanishes into the crowd shortly after, following Jaemin to where the music’s coming from. Just like that, Mark’s alone, standing by himself and awkwardly drinking his beer. People move around him, but nobody he recognizes passes him. He starts to push forward towards where he thinks Jeno and Jaemin are when someone grabs his arm. It’s Renjun, and a wave of relief washes over Mark as he lets Renjun pull him to the side. He’s pretty drunk, from what Mark can tell, and clutching a bottle of soju close to his chest.

“Are you okay?” Renjun asks, peering at Mark’s face. “You were standing alone.”

“I’m all good,” Mark assures him, holding up his beer. “I was looking for you a little while ago. Are you all set?”

“All set,” Renjun agrees, and clinks his bottle of soju against Mark’s can. “Hey, you should go to talk to Donghyuck. He wouldn’t shut up about how he’d personally invited you on Wednesday.”

“Yeah, that was unexpected,” Mark says. “I didn’t even know I was going to show up.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re here,” Renjun replies, patting him on the shoulder. “Oh, shit, I’ve got to find Jeno. Jaemin lost both him and Chenle.”

“ _Chenle_ is here?” Mark asks, raising his eyebrows. “That’s definitely not legal.”

“You forget that he’s starting college this fall,” Renjun points out, and Mark has a brief dissociative moment where his brain short-circuits as it attempts to process just how much time has passed, and how quickly. “Okay, I’m off to find Jeno. Come get me later and we’ll walk back together.”

“Sure,” Mark says, and Renjun gives him another pat on the shoulder before Mark’s alone again. The music swells around him, and the can of beer is warm under his palm. With a sigh, he makes his way inside, where it’s even darker and more crowded. He spends the better part of an hour trying to get through the living room, continuously pulled aside by people that recognize him, somehow, drunkenly shouting and pulling him in for hugs or telling him they want to see more of him over the summer, _do you have my Kakao?_

The song changes as Mark pulls himself away from a couple of boys who had been talking about their summer basketball league. Voices blend and merge, and one girl next to him goes, “oh my god is that _Lee Donghyuck?_ ”

Mark instinctively turns to look, and sure enough, there’s Donghyuck, chatting with a few people Mark vaguely recognizes. He’s wearing a huge t-shirt and denim shorts, and the room sort of goes fuzzy around the edges, just for a second. One of Donghyuck’s friends says something, and Donghyuck throws his head back to laugh, skin shiny with sweat and teeth glinting white.

Mark’s mind starts to stumble towards adjectives, towards descriptions, and nausea suddenly rises in his stomach, bile burning his throat. God, he drank too much too fast, and it’s making things not make sense, like Donghyuck, standing against the wall and looking—

 _No,_ Mark tells himself firmly.

The walls wobble, and Mark decides it’s time for him to go. All of his friends are wasted somewhere, and he’s tired and sick of wading through people all alone. Donghyuck’s got his group over there, so really, there’s no point in staying.

Resigned and a bit nauseated, Mark makes his way towards the door.

“We have to go ask him about New York,” the same girl from before is asking. “I bet he’s so cool now.”

“I hope so,” her friend mutters, looking down at her nails. “All of the boys here are dumb as rocks.”

“I can’t believe he went to Seoul,” the first sighs. “That’s so amazing. He looks so good.”

As they get closer to Donghyuck, Mark can see that he’s actually sort of being mobbed, crowded back against the wall by an impressive number of people, all tossing questions at him.

 _Good for him,_ Mark thinks. _Donghyuck loves the spotlight. Now he’ll always have it on him._

“Excuse me,” he says to the girls. “Coming through.”

He slowly edges past the group around Donghyuck. The door’s in sight, and Mark can almost feel the cool air on his face.

“Donghyuck-ssi, how was New York?” One of the girls asks behind him.

“Fantastic,” Donghyuck says, but it sounds…off, somehow. Strained, maybe. Mark hesitates, something in his gut tugging at the off-tune note in Donghyuck’s voice. “I—”

“We want to hear all about it!” She squeals. “Are the girls prettier in America? Did you learn a lot of English?”

“I missed Korea,” Donghyuck says, and he sounds increasingly cagey. Mark turns, and sure enough, he’s got his arms crossed over his chest, expression pained. “I’m—”

“Did you miss _us_?” The girl asks, sliding closer, and Donghyuck looks so uncomfortable, so unlike himself that Mark finds himself stepping closer.

He doesn’t even need to say anything. As soon as Donghyuck sees him, relief washes over his expression and he practically shoves people aside to get to him. His hand clamps down on Mark’s wrist, palm sweaty and burning hot.

“Good to see you, Mark-ah,” Donghyuck says loudly. “I promised we’d talk, yeah?”

“Uh,” Mark replies, but at Donghyuck’s deadly, pointed look, he hurries to continue. “Yeah, uh, you did.”

“Great,” Donghyuck says, and somehow manages to smile. “Nice to see everyone. I’ll be back.” And then he turns sharply on his heel, practically dragging Mark through the throngs of people. He manages to be polite to everyone that greets him, but his fingers are so tight on Mark’s wrist that he’s a little afraid he’s going to lose circulation.

Finally, they get outside. Donghyuck leads them down the stairs, away from the light and the noise, and looses a heavy breath. Mark tugs his wrist out of Donghyuck’s grasp and puts some space between them, watching as Donghyuck sags against the side of the house, looking exhausted.

“Are you good?” Mark asks tentatively. “That looked like…a lot in there.”

“They’re great people, and I missed them,” Donghyuck starts, “but they’re treating me like a commodity. I’ve been to Seoul, I’ve been to New York, and suddenly I’m…y’know,” he finishes, gesturing with his hands.

“Overwhelmed,” Mark says, and Donghyuck nods, leaning his head back against the house. “Well, I won’t ask about school if you don’t wanna talk about it.”

“I do,” Donghyuck says. “But I don’t want people to just fling questions at me. It pisses me off.”

“Imagine if you were famous,” Mark says. “You’d get into fistfights with Dispatch.”

Donghyuck grins. “I’d fight Dispatch. I’d fight those people inside, too.”

“I know.”

“Glad you rescued me.”

Mark shrugs. “You’re welcome. Wouldn’t want you to get arrested for aggravated assault again.”

“That was _not_ assault,” Donghyuck says hotly, shoving Mark. “Listen, he _hit me first._ And I was _not_ arrested.”

“Uh huh,” Mark says, disbelieving because it was seventh grade and he was there. “He definitely did _not_ hit you. That was entirely all your doing.”

Years back, someone had made a comment—Mark can’t even remember what about—and Donghyuck had whirled around so quickly the guy had tripped and caught himself on Donghyuck’s shoulder. And that was when Donghyuck had decided it was fine to elbow him in the ribs. Then a cop showed up, and it was a big mess, and Donghyuck had cried into Mark’s shirt about prison and being too young. Not that he’ll admit the last part ever happening. Even now, when Mark brings it up, Donghyuck reaches out to shove Mark again. Mark ducks, and Donghyuck stumbles and nearly falls, catching himself on the side of the house and _glaring._

“Shut up,” Donghyuck grumbles as Mark laughs so hard his stomach hurts. “How have you not changed? It’s been _two years._ ”

“Two years and you still haven’t grown up,” Mark says, breathless. He laughs again. “I forgot how easy you are to goad.”

“Ha ha,” Donghyuck mutters darkly, but there’s no real heat in his voice. In fact, he looks so familiar that Mark’s heart aches a bit, and the new hair and updated style seems to fall away until all Mark can see is the boy he’d been friends with, just the same as he was.

Donghyuck seems to realize this too, because his eyes go wide and color rises to his cheeks. He opens his mouth, closes it, and then seems to remember that this is Mark, after all, and not all those people inside. “I didn’t think it would be this easy.”

“What?” Mark says, even though he’s pretty sure he knows what Donghyuck means.

Donghyuck gestures between the two of them. “It’s like…all of it never happened.”

Mark laughs, and Donghyuck joins in this time. “Yeah, it’s kind of crazy, isn’t it? We sorta did our own things during high school, and now we’re here.”

“Now we’re here,” Donghyuck echoes. Light from the house spills from the window and onto his face, illuminating half of him. The lines of his face are nostalgic, familiar and new all at once, and Mark wonders if this is all a trick. A one-time thing. They’re both buzzed, and it’s dark, and it’s always been easy for him to fall into routine, into familiarity and the comfort of what he knows.

And standing here, teasing Donghyuck, is something he’s known for most of his life.

Then Mark’s phone rings, and the moment shatters. Donghyuck looks down at his shoes, which are very white and very new. Mark looks at the caller ID—it’s Renjun, and it’s also somehow midnight.

Mark picks up, but it’s Jeno on the other end, shouting about Renjun and Jaemin vomiting and Jisung is also here somewhere and have you seen Donghyuck or Chenle—

Donghyuck gives him a panicked look. “Why—who’s shouting?”

Mark puts the call on speaker. “Donghyuck’s here.”

“Hi, Jeno,” Donghyuck says, stepping closer.

“Hi,” Jeno replies. “Why did _hell_ did you let Jisung and Chenle come to this thing? They’re probably drunk and being accosted by a senior—”

“No, I think they’re just playing DDR in the basement,” Donghyuck interrupts. “But you might wanna go check to see if someone’s broken an ankle.”

“Renjun—” Jeno starts.

“No,” Renjun’s voice comes through the phone.

“Jaemin vomited on his shoes and he’s sad,” Jeno informs them. “Hey, Mark?”

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“Can you come get Renjun? You guys live close, and then Hyuck and I can go find everyone else.”

“What about Jaemin?” Donghyuck asks.

“He’s in a bush,” Jeno says. “He’s sitting down and he’s got water. He’s fine.”

“Good,” Donghyuck says, not concerned in the slightest. “We’ll grab him on the way out.”

“Wait a second,” Mark starts, just now processing what he’s heard, “did you say Jaemin’s in a—”

“Renjun’s coming around front,” Jeno says, cutting Mark off. “Hyuck, I’ll meet you in the back. Night, Mark! Talk to you soon.”

“Wait,” Mark says, but Jeno’s already hung up. He looks at Donghyuck, confused. “Do I…is there any point?”

“No,” Donghyuck replies, nodding once. “There’s no point.”

Mark sighs. “Well, I guess this is goodnight then.”

“Thanks again for saving me,” Donghyuck says, smiling. “And stopping me from getting in another fistfight.”

“Anytime,” Mark replies, and there’s a warm rush in his chest when Donghyuck’s smile grows.

“I’ll see you around,” he says, confident, like they’re going to pick up where they left off two years ago. “Night, Mark.”

“Night, Hyuck,” Mark replies, and doesn’t even register the nickname until Donghyuck is gone, leaving behind the same fuzzy nostalgia Mark had felt when they’d first laughed.

 _He hasn’t changed much,_ Mark thinks later that night, lying in bed and staring at the moonlight coming through the slats in his blinds. _I guess I just never noticed his face when he smiles._

He rolls over, shaking that thought away before it can trigger anything.

The last thing he thinks is, _man, I hope he comes by again,_ and then he’s asleep.

 

* * *

 

Donghyuck, much to Mark’s surprise, shows up at the grocery store a few days later. Mark doesn’t notice him at first, lurking hesitantly in the chip aisle with his head bent low. It’s only until he comes around the corner and knocks over the display of light-up keychains (not uncommon, it happens at least twice a day thanks to its location) that Mark sees him.

“Donghyuck?” He asks, surprised, and Donghyuck looks up from where he’s crouched on the floor, hands full of rapidly-blinking keychains.

“Hi,” he says sheepishly. “I didn’t see the display. Sorry.”

“Happens all the time,” Mark says, coming around from behind the counter and helping Donghyuck pick up the keychains. “My dad put this here, but all people do is knock it over.”

Donghyuck squints at one of the keychains, which flashes on-off, on-off. “Does anyone buy them?”

“We’ve sold one,” Mark says. “Maybe. Or maybe it was stolen, I don’t know.”

Donghyuck snorts. “I wouldn’t pay for it either.”

“Hey,” Mark says, shoving Donghyuck, “no stealing from my store.”

“Well, I feel bad for it,” Donghyuck says, still holding the keychain. “Nobody’s going to buy it.”

“You feel _bad_ for a keychain?”

“Yeah,” Donghyuck says. “Look, they’re just sitting here, blinking forever without ever being bought.”

“Still,” Mark says, “don’t you think it’s a little silly?”

“Well, now that you said that, I’m gonna buy it,” Donghyuck informs him, gripping the keychain. “This pink one. Fuck you.”

“Wow,” Mark says as Donghyuck stands and marches to the counter. “I forgot how ridiculous you were.”

Donghyuck gives him a sunny smile. “You missed me.”

 _Maybe I did,_ Mark thinks, but absolutely does not say that out loud. “Nah.”

“Eh, I think you did,” Donghyuck says, goading. “I don’t even know why we weren’t friends those last two years.”

“Really?” Mark asks, raising his eyebrows. “Uh, drama club? Tennis? Skinny jeans? Maybe those friends that never shut up?”

“Okay, fine, whatever, point taken,” Donghyuck interrupts, flapping a hand. “Are you still working? Do you wanna catch up for real?”

“Can’t,” Mark says. “My sister has cram school till six.”

“Fine,” Donghyuck pouts. “I guess we’ll just stay here.”

“I can catch you another time,” Mark says, and then processes Donghyuck’s words. “Wait, what?”

But Donghyuck is already coming behind the counter, clearing off the space to the side (magazines, Mark’s half-finished lunch, and a stack of bills) and jumping up on it like he’s done it a hundred times. And he has, actually, if Mark thinks about it—from fifth to sophomore year they’d sit like this—Mark behind the counter, Donghyuck on it, bent over their homework or eating chips and talking about the video game level they were both stuck on or how maybe they should start a band.

It’s a little different, now, because they have so much to say, so much to catch up on—but Donghyuck still takes ice cream for free and kicks off his slides, and Mark listens to him talk and talk and talk while he rings up customers. And slowly, the missing years of their friendship start to fill in. He learns about Donghyuck’s friends, about his classes, about how it was hard and how it was easy. How he went a little crazy with the freedom, how when he got to New York he stayed out till three in the morning, how he got pickpocketed on the train and about how his abysmal English stopped him from making any progress in school until he got better.

“But you liked it?” Mark asks as Donghyuck starts to wrap up his study abroad experience. “You didn’t regret it?”

“Absolutely not,” Donghyuck says, grinning. “It was everything I’d worked towards.”

Mark thinks about this for a minute, remembers how Donghyuck had killed himself over his grades and in cram school just so he could get out of here. “Yeah, you worked really hard. I think you earned it.”

“I definitely did,” Donghyuck agrees, crumpling up his ice cream wrapper. “I wouldn’t accept anything less.”

The bell above the door rings so aggressively that it can’t be anyone but Mina, and Mark looks up, surprised. There’s no way an hour and a half should’ve passed that quickly—except it did, and now it’s nearly six.

“Mark, you better be—oh, Donghyuck-oppa!” His sister says, stopping dead in her tracks. “ _Whoa._ I haven’t seen in you in a long time.”

“Hi, Mina-yah,” Donghyuck greets cheerfully. “How are you? Your hair looks really pretty like that.”

Mina’s cheeks turns pink, and she waves him off. “I’m good. How have you been? It’s been years.”

“Yeah, it’s been a long time,” Donghyuck says. “But I’m back for the summer now.”

“He’s not as annoying,” Mark chimes in, “so we’re back to being friends.”

“Hey,” Donghyuck protests, throwing his ice cream wrapper at Mark’s head. “I work very hard to be annoying, so that’s straight-up insulting.”

“If you have a lot of homework,” Mark says, ignoring Donghyuck, “I’ll send him away and sit for your shift too.”

“No, it’s fine,” Mina replies, waving her hands at the both of them. “We had free work time today, so I finished a lot of it.”

Mark squints at her, not sure what she’s up to. Normally, she’d be jumping at the opportunity to skip her turn at the register. She squints back at him, unyielding, and sticks out her tongue.

Donghyuck slides off the counter and makes his way towards the door. “Coming?” He asks Mark over his shoulder.

Mark stares at his sister for a minute longer, but she just shrugs and crosses her arms. Her smugness makes Mark a little uneasy, but Donghyuck slings an arm around his neck and physically drags him out of the store, skin cool from the A/C. Donghyuck smells like laundry detergent and shampoo, clean and neutral. Mark’s head spins, and he pushes away from Donghyuck so aggressively they both stumble.

Donghyuck pouts and glares at him at the same time. “Mean.”

“Mean was you putting me in a headlock,” Mark shoots back, straightening his shirt and fixing his hair. “You could’ve just used your words.”

“Yeah, but this was funnier,” Donghyuck says, like that justifies everything. “What time is it?”

“Uh, six,” Mark says. "Do you…have to go somewhere?” He hopes Donghyuck isn’t just searching for an excuse to leave.

“No,” Donghyuck replies, and suddenly it’s weird again, an unasked question hovering between them. Mark frantically searches for what it is, wondering how they can go from comfortable to tense in a second. “I was just…curious,” Donghyuck finishes, and shifts. He looks down at his shoes, and back up at Mark.

“Would you…wanna get food?” Mark asks tentatively, and breathes out when Donghyuck’s face lights up with excitement.

“Yeah, I would,” Donghyuck says. “Of course I would.”

“Noodles?” Mark asks, and Donghyuck starts down the street. “From Mr. Kim?”

“Read my mind,” Donghyuck replies, and Mark grins, jogging and falling into step next to him.

“So, what would you be doing right now if you were in school?” Donghyuck asks as they walk along, passing by storefronts and houses, lawn sprinklers wetting their feet.

Mark checks the time. “Uh, nothing, actually. Maybe Renjun and I would be doing homework.”

“Whoa, really?” Donghyuck asks, eyes going wide. “Wait, I don’t know why I’m surprised. You’ve always been…really chill.”

Mark’s breath stutters in his lungs. “What the hell does that mean?”

“Not an insult!” Donghyuck assures him quickly, patting his arm. “It’s not an insult. It’s just—even in Seoul, I was out three, four times a week. New York was worse, even if I couldn’t legally drink there. I would be up until three in the morning most days.”

“How’d you survive _that?_ ”

Donghyuck shrugs, and just for a second, Mark can see just how worn-out he is. “I dunno. I’m sort of—” He stops short here, chewing on his lip.

“Hyuck,” Mark says.

Donghyuck takes a breath. “I’m sort of glad I didn’t stay in Seoul over the summer. I don’t really—I don’t know where I was going, but it was fast. Maybe a bit too fast.” He tilts his head up at the sky, where a smattering of stars twinkle dimly. “Fuck. Now I feel gross. Sorry for dumping all of that on you.”

Mark’s mind is grinding, trying to think of something kind and not-awkward to say. He settles for _it’s fine_ and then cringes when Donghyuck looks over at him, an amused half-smile on his face, like he can feel how sticky the inside of Mark’s head feels.

“No, really,” Mark insists. “I asked. And I’m always—y’know.”

“Not really,” Donghyuck says, though the expression on his face means he does, _really,_ and he’s just being an annoying shithead on purpose.

“Two years is a lot of time,” Mark says, “but the ten years before that was even longer.”

Donghyuck’s smile is warmer, slower, teeth as white as his sneakers. “That’s really nice.”

The back of Mark’s neck prickles, and he shrugs uncomfortably. “I mean it. Remember the playground days? You were annoying then, too.”

“But you still listened,” Donghyuck comments. “Even when you were five and I was crying about my hula hoop.”

“Or when Choi Heejin beat you up in sixth grade for trying to kiss her best friend.”

“No, _you_ tried to kiss her best friend,” Donghyuck argues, even though that’s definitely not true because Mark can remember the feeling of Heejin’s fist colliding with his face. He’s got a tiny bump on his nose from where he’d fractured it. “I just saved you.”

“No, _no,_ ” Mark argues back. It’s pointless, they both know, but it feels good—nothing he’ll say will really hurt Donghyuck’s feelings, and no matter how many times Donghyuck will attempt to strangle him or hang off his arm or try to push him off his chair, it’ll turn out fine. None of their arguments ever really stick. “ _You_ tried to kiss her, and she slapped you before I jumped in and took Heejin’s punch.” Mark taps his nose. “She broke my nose, remember? And you still made me walk you to the nurse’s office.”

Donghyuck frowns and grabs Mark’s face, jerking him forward so violently Mark nearly loses balance. And then suddenly Donghyuck is close, and he’s got freckles, and his palms are burning the skin away on Mark’s jaw. He’s scowling, forehead scrunched, as he examines Mark’s nose. It lasts for about half a second before Mark wrenches out of Donghyuck’s hold, going, “what the _fuck,_ dude,” and Donghyuck hotly replying, “there’s nothing there, you’re making it up.”

“Whatever,” Mark says, rubbing his face like Donghyuck had hurt him. (He hadn’t, but Mark still feels like he’d been burned, somehow). “You don’t need to grab my whole head. That hurt.”

“Oh, big baby,” Donghyuck mutters, crossing his arms. “Oh, wait, this is it, isn’t it?” He stops in front of a tiny, cluttered store, its front window fogged-over and covering up the _Open_ sign.

Mark cups his hands on the glass and peers in. “Damn, it’s busy. Maybe we should just—”

“No, we’re eating here,” Donghyuck says, and pushes open the door. They’re met with a wave of hot, salty air, the tiny restaurant filled to the brim with people. A girl around Jisung’s age hurries up to them, her sweaty hair sticking to her face. She brightens, however, when she sees the two of them.

“Mark-ssi! And Donghyuck-ssi!” She exclaims. “Wow, I haven’t seen you together in so long!”

“Hi, Seyeon-ssi,” Mark says, and Donghyuck gives a little wave. “How busy are you right now?”

“Pretty damn busy,” Donghyuck answers, snorting. Mark ignores him.

Seyeon rises onto her tiptoes, squinting over the crowd. “You know what,” she says, pointing through the open door in the back, “a table out back just opened up. I’ll clean it off, and then it’s all yours.”

Donghyuck whoops. “Thanks, Seyeon-ssi.”

She gives them two thumbs up. “Anytime! Wow, Dad’s going to be so thrilled that you’re here. You’re all he talks about, you know.” She fake-pouts. “More than his own children.”

They make their way through the tables and then back outside, where they sit at a rickety table against the fence, bugs buzzing eagerly by the light above their heads. And it’s there that Mark tells Donghyuck about his life in between bites of cold noodles, chopsticks clicking against his bowl every time he sets them down to elaborate. Donghyuck, Mark realizes as he talks, has learned to listen—he’s learned how to redirect his nonstop movement into something else, and he sits and absorbs everything Mark is saying, cutting in every now and then with a dramatic gasp or most often a teasing remark. And they sit like that long into the night, even after their bowls are empty—Mark talking, Donghyuck listening, and it almost feels like nothing’s changed.

 

* * *

 

The emphasis, as always, is on _almost._ Donghyuck shows up again the next day, and then he keeps showing up, and Mark has begun to look forward to him bursting into the shop in something fashionable yet entirely seasonally inappropriate, stealing ice cream and then sitting on the counter until Mina shows up. He manages, somehow, to weasel Mark’s schedule at the docks out of him, and by the end of the second week he’s seeing Donghyuck twice a day—during the light hours, where they sit in air conditioning, and then at night, where Mark can pick out Donghyuck’s too-white sneakers amongst the cool, wet darkness by the docks, when Mark’s soaked with sea spray and smelling like cleaning supplies. And in the cover of night, Mark thinks about things like Donghyuck’s hands, or the freckles on his cheeks and the way his legs look in that one pair of Adidas shorts, and he has to fight the nausea away, panicked and sweating all of a sudden, moving as far away as he can manage from Donghyuck, who will frown and ask if Mark feels sick.

 _Yeah, I do,_ Mark wants to say on Friday morning, picking at his breakfast while his dad flicks through the morning paper. _I think I’m sick. I think there’s something wrong with me._

 _Or maybe it’s fine,_ the more rational part of him soothes. _Anybody would notice Donghyuck’s freckles. Or those shorts. I don’t think a single person besides him would ever wear something that stupid-looking._

He feels a bit better once he thinks this. Those shorts _are_ stupid, legs or not.

Donghyuck and Jaemin text him at the same time as he’s mopping the floor in the fishery Friday night, headphones in.

 _COME TO PARTY!!!!!!!!!!!_ Jaemin’s text says.

Donghyuck’s is a bit longer, and slightly more ominous: _i am coming right now to get you wash the fish guts off ur hands_

Mark yanks an earbud out. “Hey, hyung.”

Taeil, who’s bent over a microscope, looks up. “Hm?”

“Can I go after I mop?” Mark asks, feeling a bit awkward. He’s never ever asked to leave early, ever, despite Taeil always insisting that he’s too young and the weather is too nice for him to spend hours cleaning a fishery. “My friends are having a party.”

“Of course,” Taeil says immediately, grinning. “That sounds fun! Just what you’re supposed to be doing on a night like this, not mopping the floor.”

Mark laughs. “Thanks, hyung.”

“Is it Donghyuck?” Taeil asks, bending back over his microscope. “He’s been coming by pretty often.”

Mark shrugs, the back of his neck going hot as he thinks about the absurd amount of time he and Donghyuck have spent together, sometimes literally doing nothing at all. “Yeah. We reconnected at the beginning of the summer.”

“That’s really good to hear,” Taeil says, scribbling something down before he straightens and smiles. “I always thought you guys were good together.”

“We were into different stuff in high school, so we, uh—”

“Went on hiatus?” Taeil offers.

“Sure,” Mark says. “Hiatus. But I didn’t realize how easily we’d reconnect.”

“Comforting, right?” Taeil asks. “So much has changed, but also everything’s the same.”

Mark shrugs, though he agrees with Taeil. “Yeah, I guess so. Hey, how’s your grad school application going?”

Taeil makes a face. “I forgot how _stupid_ college is,” he says. “You know I’m trying to go to Australia, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, there’s so much extra I have to do because I’m an international student, and from _Korea_ no less, and who actually is interested in fisheries these days?”

“I know a few people, actually,” Mark says.

Taeil sighs. “That’s because you’re a bio nerd.”

“I suck at bio.”

“You do _not_ ,” Donghyuck chimes from behind them, startling Mark so badly he nearly slips on the wet floor, barely catching himself on the handle of the mop. “You aced that class.”

“Holy _shit,_ ” Mark says, whirling on Donghyuck. “You almost killed me.”

“Mark, that guy is here again!” Yukhei calls from somewhere far away. “The short one!”

Donghyuck turns back to Mark with a shit-eating grin. “Hi.”

“You suck,” Mark tells him, but Donghyuck’s smile only widens.

“Donghyuck-ah,” Taeil greets, waving cheerfully. “How are you?”

“Hi, hyung,” Donghyuck says. “I’m good, how are you?”

“A little tired,” Taeil admits. “But it’s nice to see you! Are you here to grab Mark?”

“Yep,” Donghyuck says. “He got out of pregaming last time, so I was sent here by Jaemin to kidnap him.”

“I could’ve come on my own,” Mark points out.

“Yeah, but it’s more fun this way,” Donghyuck says. “Now come on, stinky-fish man. Drop the mop and let’s go!”

“ _Stinky-fish man_ ,” Mark repeats, dubious. “No way you just said that.”

“See you later, Taeil-hyung!” Donghyuck calls, ignoring Mark entirely. He grabs Mark by the wrist and hauls him towards the front door. He barely manages to snag his backpack on the way out, Donghyuck’s pace is so aggressive.

“Really?” Mark complains, but he lets Donghyuck pull him up the stairs and breaks into a reluctant jog so they can catch the bus towards Jaemin’s house.

“So,” Donghyuck says when they’re settled, “how was work?”

“Short,” Mark says, giving him a pointed look. “At this rate, I’m going to be losing money.”

“Aw, poor Mark,” Donghyuck simpers, patting him on the knee. “Can’t mop floors because his best friend is forcing him to go have fun.”

“You’re annoying as hell, and I hope you know that,” Mark tells Donghyuck, and when he leans in, cooing and making baby noises, Mark shoves him away. He very pointedly ignores the way his stomach had fluttered at the words _best friend._

Everyone is already at Jaemin’s house when they arrive, Donghyuck bursting theatrically through the door and dodging a swinging punch from Jeno, who then flings a t-shirt at him.  Mark is overwhelmed with a rush of affection for Jeno. Good to know the subconscious urge to hit Donghyuck anytime he does anything is seemingly mutual.

There are a couple of girls from college there, too. The majority of them are Jeno and Jaemin’s friends, but Mark recognizes one of them fairly well—Kim Na-ri, the one who went on a couple dates with him before she’d sort-of-dumped him. He turns around quickly before she can see him, and a cup is pressed into his hand. “Somaek,” Jaemin says, mischievous. “Cheers. Good to see you.”

“Oh _hyung_!” Someone trills from behind them, and both Jaemin and Mark turn to see Chenle poking his head out from behind a doorway, grinning maniacally. “Do you have more toilet paper?”

Jaemin wrinkles his nose. “Yeah, it should be in the cabinet.”

“Thanks,” Chenle says, disappearing back around the corner. “Jisung! Pinch the _bridge,_ not the nostril!”

Jaemin and Mark exchange a look. _Should we go check on them?_ passes between them silently, and they both decide, equally as silent, that no, it’s not worth it. Especially if it’s Jisung and Chenle.

“They’re old enough to take care of it,” Jaemin justifies. “They’re not babies anymore.”

There’s a shriek, and the sound of something heavy hitting the ground.

“Let’s go over there,” Jaemin suggests, and he and Mark hurry over to where Jeno’s talking to Renjun and Donghyuck.

Jisung and Chenle emerge a little later, pink-faced and giggly. Jisung’s got a wad of toilet paper shoved up his nose, and Chenle is laughing so hard he can barely stand straight.

Renjun looks at them, unimpressed. “You guys.”

“Jisung got a bloody nose,” Chenle says breathlessly, doubling over and holding his sides, “because he slipped, and—”

“I headbutted the mirror,” Jisung informs them, muffled by all the toilet paper. “It hurt a lot.”

“Oh my god I’ve done the exact same thing,” Jaemin says, covering his mouth. “Also in that bathroom, on that same mirror—was it the rug?”

“THE RUG!” Chenle shouts, and he and Jisung dissolve into hysterical laughter again, joined shortly by Jaemin.

Renjun raises his eyebrows and looks away. _Crazy,_ he mouths at the rest of them, and Donghyuck snorts.

“Alright, it’s nearly ten, do we wanna walk over?” Jeno asks, and him and Donghyuck (with a surprising amount of effectiveness and teamwork) manage to wrangle the nine or so of them and get them out the back door just as Jaemin’s mom gets back, the sound of the garage door inspiring a comedic sort of panic in Jaemin as he ushers them down the sidewalk.

The party is near campus, at a house shared by Jungwoo, who Jeno knows from soccer club, and a couple of other guys that Jeno promises are really chill.

Donghyuck and Mark walk together at the back of the group, deterring anyone from joining their conversation with a whole slew of new inside jokes and a fair amount of shoving. Jeno texts Jungwoo when they’re outside the house—the music and people audible from the sidewalk—and it’s only when he lets them in that Na-ri finally walks up to him.

“Hi, Mark-ssi,” she says politely. Gritting his teeth, Mark tears himself away from his conversation with Donghyuck so he can greet her back. “And you’re…” She asks, looking at Donghyuck.

“Lee Donghyuck,” Donghyuck says. “I’m Mark’s best friend. From Seoul.”

Na-ri’s eyebrows shoot up. “Seoul?”

“He’s not from Seoul,” Mark corrects, stepping on Donghyuck’s foot. “He just goes to school there.”

“Oh,” Na-ri says, but she still looks impressed. Mark can feel the smugness radiating off of Donghyuck. “That’s really cool.”

“Yeah,” Mark says, and they fall into a moment of awkward silence. Na-ri shifts from foot-to-foot, before she finally says, “hey, actually, I wanted to apologize for my text.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Mark assures her quickly, not wanting this to happen _right in front_ of Donghyuck, who’ll make fun of him for it until the end of time. “Really. I get it.”

“You’re being far too nice to me,” Na-ri says. “I shouldn’t have dumped that on you over text. You were so polite—the least I could’ve done was say it in person.”

 _Polite? Really?_ Mark thinks, partly amused and partly annoyed. _Two dates and she gets ‘polite’?_

Donghyuck barely manages to cover his laugh with a cough.

“So, I just wanted to apologize,” she continues, and Donghyuck’s shaking with the effort of not laughing now, and it’s making Mark want to laugh as well. He presses his lips together so he can let her finish. “I wish you the best, really. Hopefully I’ll see you around.”

Mark takes a deep breath through his nose. “Yeah, hopefully,” he gets out. Next to him, Donghyuck holds a fist to his mouth to hide his smile. “Enjoy the party, Na-ri.”

“Thanks,” she says, and gives him one last smile before vanishing into the crowd.

Donghyuck lets his laughter out, eyes watering and face red. “ _Polite!_ ” He shouts. “That was so dramatic.”

“What the hell,” Mark says, laughing as well. “Girls—girls make no sense. She looked like she was two seconds away from writing me a letter, or something.”

“She made it sound like you’ve been in a committed relationship for two years,” Donghyuck adds, and Mark laughs harder, his cheeks aching. “I need a drink. Do you want one?”

“Sure,” Mark says, and Donghyuck nods, patting him on the shoulder before edging his way into the crowd.

That’s the last he sees of Donghyuck for a little while, but doesn’t notice because he meets Jaehyun, one of Jungwoo’s roommates, and then drinks enough to be convinced to come dance, which he does rather terribly until he’s laughing again and drenched in sweat. He begs for a break, and the girl he’d been doing the cha-cha slide with smiles and tells him that she’ll go stand outside with him.

“I forgot how fun that was,” she says as they make their way down the steps, taking up a spot against the wall. She offers her cup to Mark. “Just water,” she assures him.

He takes a sip. It’s tepid, but far better than beer. He leans his head back against the wall with more force than he’d meant, but he’s drunk and it doesn’t hurt.

“What year are you?” The girl asks. “Junior?”

“Sophomore,” Mark says, and the words feel thick in his mouth. “Holy fuck, a sophomore. I can’t believe my whole first year is just gone.”

“I know!” She agrees, nudging him. “Crazy how that happens.”

The world starts to tilt. Mark realizes it’s because he’s slowly sliding sideways.

“Oh damn,” he says, righting himself. “I’m pretty drunk.”

“More water,” the girl insists, and he takes another sip. “Did you ever find your friend?”

“Find…my…friend,” Mark says slowly, trying to remember. “Jeno?”

“No, not Jeno,” the girl says. “You came over with Jaehyun and told us you couldn’t stay for long because you’d lost…Hyuck?”

Mark’s stomach drops. “Oh, damn,” he says again. “ _Hyuck._ ”

“He’s probably fine,” the girl reassures him. “But I gotta say, it’s nice to see that you look out for him. I know a lot of guys who don’t.”

“I gotta find him,” Mark says, disregarding everything she’s saying entirely. “Dumbass owes me a drink.”

“What—” she says, confused, but Mark is already pushing away from the wall and charging back up the stairs and into the house.

“Have you seen Donghyuck?” He asks the first person he recognizes—Jeno, he realizes, who is somehow holding four cans of beer. “He’s gone.”

“Uh, he went that way maybe twenty minutes ago,” Jeno says, nodding towards the hallway. “If you happen to see Jaemin, please tell him that I’m still holding all of his beers and I’m going to drink them if he doesn’t hurry up.”

“Right,” Mark says. “Why do you have so many beers?”

“I honestly could not tell you,” Jeno says, looking down at all the cans like he, too, can’t quite understand.

Mark pats Jeno on the back and makes his way through the living room and down the hallway, asking people as he passes if they’ve seen a boy in really ugly denim shorts and a baseball hat pass through here. One of them finally points him to a door at the end of the hallway, cracked open so that Mark can see dim, yellow light spilling from it.

“Thank god,” he mutters, and is about to burst into the room when he stops in his tracks, blood running cold.

Donghyuck, sure enough, is in there—and he’s kissing a _guy._ Full-on kissing, too—his eyes are closed, and he’s sitting halfway in the boy’s lap. Mark doesn’t recognize the other guy, not that it would matter—all he can really see is Donghyuck, who is kissing a boy.

A _boy._

The air feels like it’s being crushed out of Mark’s body. His stomach churns, and he can’t tell if he’s surprised or weirded-out or something _worse,_ like curious or fascinated or something slightly more…sharp.

Donghyuck tilts his head to the side, and Mark can’t help but stare for a second. He’s drunk. He’s _so_ drunk, and for a second Mark almost thinks Donghyuck is beautiful. _Almost._ There’s that word again.  

The boy’s hand comes up to squeeze at Donghyuck’s hip, and Donghyuck makes a breathy noise that cuts through the drunken glaze over Mark’s brain and rattles him to his very core, shaking him out of it. He’s suddenly repulsed with himself for standing there and _watching,_ intruding. Boy or not—this is private. This is not something he’s supposed to be seeing.

Woodenly, Mark turns on his heel to go, the door hinges groaning as he steps back into the hallway. This is enough to alert Donghyuck, though, who breaks away from the boy, sees Mark, and gasps, scrambling away from his partner and off the bed like he’d been burned.

“Mark,” he gasps. “You—I—”

Mark’s fingers are going numb. “I was looking for you. You vanished. I was worried.”

Donghyuck’s mouth turns down, guilty. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Mark says, and it feels like he’s not really in his own body. “I’ll just go.”

“No, wait,” Donghyuck says desperately. The boy on the bed reaches for him, but Donghyuck shakes him off, ignoring him entirely.

Mark pretends not to hear him, pushing through the crowd and towards the front door. The suffocating warmth of the house, the image of Donghyuck and that boy, burned into his brain, chokes him. He needs to get out of here. He needs to clear his head.

“Mark, _wait,_ ” Donghyuck calls again, but Mark elbows past one final group of people and bursts outside, breathing deeply. He braces his hands on his knees, head spinning. Behind him, someone retches into the bushes.

“Mark,” Donghyuck says. There’s a warm hand on his back, and Mark smells clean clothes and something sweeter.

“It’s fine,” he says, squeezing his eyes shut. “I’m fine. You’re fine.”

“I don’t—”

“I just want to go home, Donghyuck,” he says, and can register how tired he sounds. “I’ll call Mina.” He straightens and shakes Donghyuck’s hand off of him. “Go back inside.”

“Are you mad?” Donghyuck asks timidly. “Do you—do you h—”

“No,” Mark says, firm enough that he takes himself by surprise. “I don’t. I just—I just need to sleep, I think. But you’re—it’s okay.”

Donghyuck looks at him, and Mark can see the vulnerability in his eyes, all of his confidence stripped away. And through his drunken haze, Mark distantly thinks that he could never, _ever_ hate Donghyuck, boys or not.

But he does need sleep. “I’m calling Mina,” he says cautiously, and dials her number. She picks up after a couple rings, sounding sleepy.

“Come get me,” Mark says immediately. “I’ll do your shifts for a week if you do.”

“I’m telling Dad,” Mina threatens. “I was watching TV.”

“Don’t tell Dad.”

“I’m going to. I can’t believe this. You go out, get wasted—”

“I’m not _wasted_ —”

“—and then expect me to come peel you off the sidewalk,” she finishes in a huff. But Mark can hear the sound of blankets being thrown back, and her feet hitting the floor. He feels a rush of gratitude.

“Don’t tell Dad,” he repeats. “Please, Mina.”

“Ooh, he’s using _please_ ,” his sister says, mocking. “Fine. You do my shifts this week and then the week after, you drive me to cram school in the morning.”

“Done,” Mark says. “You drive a hard bargain.”

“I’m the only sister you’ve got,” Mina reminds him. “Who’s picking you up again? _Illegally,_ because only technically have my permit?”

Mark sighs. On the other side of the phone, Mina tells their dad that she’s going out to pick up some _lady supplies,_ the one thing their dad will never, _ever_ ask about.

“I can’t believe that works every time,” Mark says in disbelief.

“It’s because it freaks him out,” Mina says, cackling. “Okay, send me your location and I’ll be over in fifteen.”

“Thanks,” Mark says. “No, really, I mean it.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Mina replies, and then hangs up without a goodbye.

Mark forgets Donghyuck’s still standing next to him until Donghyuck clears his throat. “Jeno just texted me,” he says. “I’m going back inside. Will you be okay out here?”

“Yes,” Mark says, looking down at his feet. He feels a little bad for being so icy, but he’s not capable of facing everything that just happened right now. “I’ll see you later.”

Donghyuck hesitates for a moment, like he might say something more. But then he nods silently, and heads back into the house.

Mina picks him up a few minutes later, and they’re silent for most of the car ride until Mina huffs, irritated, and says, “stop sulking and tell me what’s wrong.”

“I’m not sulking,” Mark mutters. “I’m just…I’m thinking.”

“About what?”

Mark purses his lips. Mina waits.

“I think…Donghyuck’s gay,” he says, and that word out loud is like a lightning strike, rattling through Mark’s bones and singeing the hair off his arms. He’s heard it before, by people who think it’s an insult or on certain parts of the internet.

Mina doesn’t take her eyes off the road. “Okay, and?”

“What do you mean, _okay and?_ ”

“I mean, did he hurt you? Was he mean? Did he do anything to wrong you or harm you?”

“No,” Mark says, totally confused. “He didn’t, but that’s—”

“So then it’s fine,” Mina cuts in, shrugging. “He’s gay. A lot of people are, Mark. They just never say it because they’re terrified of being hated or being hurt.”

“But how can you just—”

“Oppa, listen to me,” Mina says sternly. “Do you hate Donghyuck?”

“No,” Mark says immediately. “He’s—he’s my friend. I could never hate him. I’m just surprised, is all. Not mad. Or grossed-out.”

“Did you tell him that?”

Mark looks away, guilty. Mina sighs and mutters something that sounds like _boys_ under her breath.

“I don’t know how to, okay?” Mark says, pleading. “It was so weird. Fuck. He’s probably sad.”

“Oh, he definitely is,” Mina says. “Text him right now and tell him what you just told me.”

Mark takes out his phone and pulls up Donghyuck’s contact. “I dunno.”

“Mark, he needs to hear it,” Mina says, pulling up to their house and parking the car. “I’m not letting you out until you do.”

“Fine, fine,” Mark grumbles, and though it takes him a second (he’s still fairly drunk, which makes texting infinitely harder) he types out the message and sends it off.

_Hi Hyuck. I’m sorry about tonight. You know I suck at words. But I just wanted to say that I don’t hate you and you’re still my friend. That’s not gonna change, no matter what._

Mina reads it over with an appraising eye and nods firmly. “Good.”

Mark slides out of the car, stumbling and catching himself on the hood. “Am I allowed to go to bed now?”

Mina rolls her eyes. “Yes, oppa. You’re welcome, by the way, for the fantastic advice and the ride and for being the best sister ever and—”

“Okay, pushing it,” Mark says, fumbling for his keys. “But—yeah. I appreciate it.”

Mina steps past him with her keys and unlocks the door. The house is dark and quiet, and Mark can hear their father snoring from his room. They creep through the kitchen, and pause at the staircase—Mark’s room is the attic upstairs, and Mina’s is straight ahead, where their mom’s office used to be.

“Is the shop door locked,” Mina whispers, leaning against the railing.

Mark turns and looks at it. “I think so.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, it’s gotta be. Dad’s anal about it.”

A beat of hesitation. Mark is starting to come down from being drunk.

“Be nice to Donghyuck,” his sister says at last. “Okay? He really needs you a lot.”

These words spin through Mark’s head as he brushes his teeth and tugs of his clothes off and collapses into his bed. He’s exhausted, and he needs sleep. But he also needs to put the pieces together, needs to reconcile this Donghyuck with the one he thought he knew, the one that wouldn’t kiss boys, _couldn’t_ kiss boys, how was this even a thing? Was that a thing? Kissing boys? Did he do it in New York? Did he do it Seoul? Did he do it _here,_ right in this town, in those years when they weren’t talking?

On his nightstand, Mark’s phone lights up with a text. It’s from Donghyuck, and he scrambles to open it.

_thank you i was really really worried are you sure you’re not mad? i didn’t want to keep it from you but i was afraid : < _

Mark types out a reply as fast as he can.

_No of course I’m not mad_

And then, without thinking:

_To prove it I’ll buy you noodles_

Donghyuck sends a heart and a thumbs up emoji, and suddenly Mark can breathe again, heart slowing. Even when they were kids, after Mark had stopped trying to kill Donghyuck on sight, their arguments had never lasted more than a few hours. Convenient, as they argued—and still do—a lot.

The weird feeling in his stomach lingers, sticky and roiling. He ignores it, though, and is glad when sleep comes, swift and dark.

 

* * *

 

They don’t talk about it. Or, they do, but only a little. Donghyuck gives out details bit-by-bit when the conversation turns towards it, and Mark learns about Minho in junior year and then New York, and how that was like waking up and breathing freely for the first time in his life. He mentions the harder parts, almost casually, but Mark can see the memory pass over his face, a shadow across his eyes. _It wasn’t easy,_ that part of him says. _And it hurt._

It’s pretty awful to hear about, if he’s being honest, and it sparks a tiny flame of anger hearing about it. Donghyuck reads it on his face and laughs a bit, patting his hand.

It’s fine, at first, and Mark barely notices any differences. He works, sees his friends, and summer starts to creep on. It gets warmer, and wetter. Monsoon season brings nearly unbearable humidity, which only lifts near the water. Tourists and locals alike make mass migrations to the beach. Mark and his friends make plans to go on Friday, when the rain is supposed to hold off until four.

Tonight, however, is Tuesday, and it’s dumping, rain lashing the windows and battering the roof and making it difficult to hear anything. His sister has the TV volume cranked up, a fan pointed at her face as she scribbles halfheartedly in her workbook, one eye trained on the screen. Mark helps their father do dishes in relative silence, letting the wind and rain shake the house.

“This is the worst storm I’ve seen in a long time,” their dad comments. “Maybe since Mina-yah was a baby.”

“I hope the cram school floods and I don’t have to go,” Mina says grumpily. “I’m so sick of it.”

“Come on,” their dad says, frowning, “I’m paying a lot of money for it, Mina-yah.”

“I know, and I work really really hard,” she replies, “but it’s exhausting. All of my friends are going to the beach and eating ice cream, and I have math homework to do every night.”

Their dad sighs, handing Mark another dish. “You said this is what you wanted. Do you not want to go anymore?”

Mina shoots Mark a pleading look, who steps in reluctantly. He's heard this argument a thousand times by now, and it's getting old. 

“It’s not that she doesn’t want to go, Dad, it’s just that she wants a break.”

“Well, that’s fair,” their dad says after a moment, like somehow what Mark has said is any different or more reasonable. “It’s hard.”

Mina scowls at him as soon as his back is turned, but mouths _thank you_ in Mark’s direction.

That night, he dreams that he’s in a courthouse, watching Mina and their dad argue. But they’re speaking in a different language, and they can’t seem to hear Mark. It starts to rain, and the windows burst inwards, shattering glass. He yells at them to stop, but they still can’t hear him, so he gets up to go. But as soon as he walks out of the courthouse, everything slides sideways and slows down, like underwater. Now he’s in a dim room and there are hands on his waist, sliding up under his shirt, and mouth pressed against his rib cage. Everything is spinning, and there’s the low rumble of a voice as the mouth slides lower. A spike of heat throbs low in Mark’s stomach, unfolding. He’s able to look down, finally, and sees nothing but dark hair and a broad back—definite, terrifying, and absolutely _not_ a girl.

He jerks awake, gasping and drenched in sweat. He kicks his sheets back and takes a shuddery breath, trying to erase the dream from his head. The shoulders, the hands, too big to be a girl’s—

 _Stop stop stop,_ he thinks to himself, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes until they hurt.

“This can’t be happening,” he says aloud. “ _No._ This is not happening. This is not happening to me.”

He’s barely able to fall asleep after that, terrified that the mystery boy will return. But he doesn’t, and Mark wakes the next morning feeling wrung-out and slightly sick to his stomach. He turns the dream over in his head all day until the edges have worn smooth, and even then he can’t stop thinking about it, as sick as it makes him feel.

And then it happens again. The same boy, the same hands, the same twist of arousal in his stomach until he wakes up and breathes into his pillow and tries to undo himself. Tries to force his brain away. _Out._

“You look tired,” his dad comments on Thursday morning as Mark pours himself some cereal. “Are you getting enough sleep? Is it too hot in the attic?”

“Just been having bad dreams,” Mark mumbles, and it’s not too far from the truth. “I think I need to go to bed earlier.”

His father makes a disgruntled noise. “Is Taeil working you too hard?”

“No,” Mark says immediately, because his job at the fishery—the manual labor, the science—keeps his mind off of things and exhausts him enough that the dreams are short. “I like the fishery.”

“It’s summer, oppa,” Mina says, mouth full of toast. “You shouldn’t be losing sleep.”

“Shut up,” he tells her, because what does _she_ know? The constant state of anxiety Mark’s been suddenly plunged into is just as bad as the stress school gives him.

Mina frowns at him, looking a little hurt. “Didn’t mean anything by it. Maybe you need a nap today.”

Mark’s irritation spikes, but he ignores her in favor of shoveling cereal into his mouth so he can get out of here. “I’m meeting up with Renjun,” he says, “to help him look at bikes.”

His family barely gets two words in before he’s got his shoes on and is out the door, nearly running down the street until his annoyance finally lets up.

Renjun can definitely tell there’s something off, but thankfully doesn’t push it like Jaemin or Donghyuck would. Instead, he does most of the talking, and Mark lets his mind drift, letting the knot in his chest subside for the time being. They meet up with Jaemin and Jeno for lunch, where they sit for a solid two hours and talk some more. Mark’s slightly disappointed Donghyuck isn’t there, but they confirm their plans to go to the beach tomorrow, where Donghyuck replies with a couple of emojis and a lot of exclamation points.

“I think being back here has been good for him,” Jeno says, and Mark ignores the way Jeno’s eyes flicker over to him for a second.

“Yeah, me too,” Jaemin says, taking a sip of his soda. “I knew he went out a ton during school, and in New York. It’s been low-key here, and I think he needed it.” Jaemin gives Mark a similar look, one that has an uncomfortable heat creeping up the back of his neck.

It doesn’t help when he has yet another dream—exactly the same as the ones before it, save for the end, when everything melts away and Donghyuck is sitting in front of him, chin propped in his hands.

“What are you doing here?” Mark tries to ask, but it comes out soundless. He feels like he’s moving through molasses.

Donghyuck just continues to look at him, unblinking.

“Donghyuck,” Mark tries again, but he can already feel alertness tugging at him, freaked out by the dream and trying to tell him that he’s sweating to death and on the verge of vomiting.

“It gets worse,” Donghyuck finally says, nodding. “Don’t worry.”

Mark snaps awake, breathing hard. _It gets worse._ Fantastic. Even in his dreams, Donghyuck is entirely unhelpful. He takes a deep breath through his nose, and carefully empties his mind, letting the dream wash away. _It’s fine. It’s just a thing. I’ll get through it._

They’re flimsy lies, he knows, and don’t mean much when things are slowly getting messier and more confusing as the days pass. But it’s either this or face whatever monster is growing in his brain. And when he thinks about _that,_ he’d pick almost-lies every single time. At this point, they’re all he’s really got.

 

* * *

 

The sun is bright and hot Friday morning when Jaemin comes by to pick him up in his shiny new Volvo, honking loudly while Mark tracks down his flip-flops and shoves an pretzels into his backpack. He’s got the windows rolled down, grinning widely, and Jeno leans past him to shout, “took you long enough!”

“You said ten,” Mark accuses. “I didn’t expect you to be early.”

“I got so excited,” Jaemin says, unlocking the doors, “that I couldn’t wait any longer. Sorry.”

Mark gives him a look, and opens the trunk. There’s an unbelievable amount of shit crammed in the small space, made even smaller by Chenle and Renjun, who are squished into the back seats.

“Donghyuck saved you a spot,” Renjun says, “which is not how it works but he can also punch really hard.”

“As long as I don’t have to sit in the middle,” Mark says, “I don’t even care if it’s next to Donghyuck.”

“I can hear everything you’re saying, you know,” Donghyuck replies loudly, and when Mark comes around to sit, he kicks him in the side.

“Dude,” Mark complains, rubbing his ribs. “Why’d you do that?”

“Vengeance,” Donghyuck says, and then spends the rest of the car ride slumped against Mark while he scrolls through Instagram. There are a few occasions when Mark attempts to shove him off, but Jisung immediately pushes him back over. And as much as Mark pretends to be annoyed, he’s not _really—_ there’s something awfully comforting about the solid of weight of Donghyuck’s body, the sharp dig of his shoulder and the familiar smell of his laundry detergent and something sweeter, like flowers or vanilla.

The beach is already fairly crowded when they get there, but they’re obnoxious enough to evacuate most people sitting around them. Jeno hooks up his speaker and Jaemin chases Chenle into the water, both of them shouting loudly.

Mark lies in the sun with Renjun until he starts to sweat through his towel, and by then, Donghyuck and Jisung are playing frisbee in the water, where they take turns making overly-dramatic dives into the water to catch the disc. Donghyuck comes up laughing, already bronzed from the sun. He pushes a hand through his hair, getting it off of his face, eyes curving with the force of his smile.

Mark’s gut twists, and he flies to his feet, spraying sand everywhere.

“Hey, what—” Renjun says, but Mark’s gone, sprinting towards the ocean. The water barely slows him down, and he hooks an arm around Donghyuck’s waist and bodily slams him back under the waves. He and Jisung are too busy laughing to register Donghyuck springing back upright and leaping onto Mark, hands on his shoulders and feet locking around his waist. Suddenly off-balance, Mark topples backwards, head going under. The water is salty and cold, and it temporarily paralyzes him, muscles freezing up. Donghyuck’s body, in contrast, is warm, knees digging into Mark’s sides. A hand brushes over his cheek—or maybe it’s seaweed, or Mark’s hair—and then his lungs start to burn for oxygen, so he breaks the surface again, sputtering and shoving Donghyuck away.

Donghyuck grins at him, mischief glinting in his eyes. “Vengeance,” he repeats, and Mark narrows his eyes, peeling wet hair off of his face and standing so he’s only waist-deep in the water. Donghyuck’s gaze sharpens for a moment, and Mark’s face goes hot, suddenly self-conscious in a way he can’t place. So he splashes Donghyuck directly in the eyes, and whatever tension had been winding around them breaks.

They spend the next couple hours in and out of the water, lying out on towels and getting absurdly sunburned while they eat pretzels and Subway. Jisung drops an ice cube down Chenle’s swim trunks and gets a mouthful of sand as a result. They bury Jeno and leave him there to go get ice cream, where he and Donghyuck get into a heated argument about college parties ( _they’re overrated_ , Mark says, _and so tiring_. _Yeah_ , Donghyuck shoots back, _that’s exactly what a homebody would_ _say_ ) which of course results in them wrestling, toppling backwards off the blankets. Donghyuck plays dirty and tries to tickle him, and when Mark gets onto his feet, ready to take him down, Donghyuck kicks him in the back of the knee, causing his legs to buckle. Mark hits the ground hard, out-of-breath, and surrenders. Donghyuck’s laugher is maniacal, the sound of it so bright that it's almost worth all the sand he’s now got in his asscrack.

They collapse onto the blanket, breathing hard. Mark rolls onto his back and slings an arm over his face, blocking out the sun, and listens to the crash of waves on the shore and the sound of Donghyuck’s breath near his ear.

“This is really nice,” Donghyuck says quietly.

“Mm,” Mark says. “See, you don’t have to be _doing_ things all the time to have fun.”

“Uh-huh,” Donghyuk deadpans, and Mark lifts his arm so he can grin at Donghyuck. “What are you smiling about? Try me, jackass.”

Mark laughs, and Donghyuck rolls onto his stomach, propping his chin on his hands. “Hey, remember when _Gangnam Style_ came out?”

“I don’t want to hear this story,” Mark immediately responds, because he _does_ remember—unfortunately.

“Ooh, a story?” Jaemin asks, scooting close.

“Is this about sixth-grade Mark?” Jeno adds, and sits down next to Mark. “Because if so, I definitely want to hear it.”

“Donghyuck, do not—” Mark starts, slightly panicked, but Donghyuck ignores him and clears his throat.

“So, the year is twenty-twelve,” Donghyuck says theatrically, “and _Gangnam Style_ has just dropped on YouTube, and Mark is _obsessed.”_

Jeno, who’s already cracking up, slaps Mark hard on his knee. “No _way._ No fucking way. _Gangnam Style?_ Really?”

“I’m serious,” Donghyuck says, growing more animated. “And all he wanted to do was the choreo. That’s it. We’d come back from school and I’d be doing math sheets or whatever and Mark would be on his iPod touch, _Gangnam Style_ on loop, doing the dance.”

“Donghyuck, please,” Mark begs, face already getting hot. “Do not—”

“No, no, we need to hear this,” Jaemin says, shushing Mark. Jeno’s laughter is soundless by now, and he’s so red in the face Mark is a little concerned. Even Jisung and Chenle have stopped whatever they were doing to listen in.

Donghyuck gives Mark a delighted smile, eyes curving and cheeks lifting. Mark wants to punch him.

“So one day, we’re in the living room, and my mom’s just vacuumed the carpet,” Donghyuck continues, and Mark is starting to get a headache from listening to him. He feels like he’s on the verge of bursting into flames of embarrassment.

“No,” Jaemin gasps, hands flying up to cover his mouth. “ _No._ ”

“So there’s Mark, and he’s about to get to the lasso move,” Donghyuck continues, and Jeno’s got tears in his eyes at this point. “But he’s wearing socks. And he’s twelve. Which means he’s got no motor skills and he slips, hits his head on the coffee table, passes out, and ends up in the emergency room.”

Jeno falls sideways, kicking violently like he’s never heard anything funnier. Mark buries his face in his arms, and Chenle’s dolphin laughter fills the air around them.

“And that’s what the scar on his eyebrow is from,” Donghyuck finishes triumphantly. “We told my mom that he slipped while he was running. You’re the first people to know it was from _Gangnam Style_ since it happened.”

“Wow,” Jisung says around his laughter. “I’m honored.”

Mark groans, and there’s a gentle pat on his shoulder.

“There there,” Donghyuck says, and Mark can hear the amusement in his voice. “You have to admit, it’s pretty funny. _Gangnam Style,_ of all things. If we posted that on the Internet, Psy would probably make you a celebrity.”

“You’re the worst friend ever,” Mark says, but it’s only a matter of minutes before he’s laughing along with the rest of his friends, warm in the sun and pressed against Donghyuck.

The sky starts to darken around four, as predicted, threatening rain. The wind picks up, lifting some of the humidity, and it’s with great reluctance that they tug on shirts and pack their stuff up. The clouds continue to build as Jaemin starts dropping people off, starting with Jeno, who’s farthest. When he gets to Mark’s house, though, Donghyuck gets out too, saying that he can just walk from here.

“Hyuck, it looks like it’s going to rain at any second,” Jaemin says worriedly, peering up at the sky. “Look, the streetlights are coming on, that’s how dark it is.”

“It’s just two blocks,” Donghyuck says. “Two blocks that’ll save you ten minutes. You know how busy that intersection is.”

At this, Jaemin hesitates. He really hates sitting in traffic.

“Okay, fine,” he relents at last. “But if you get blown away in the wind, I’m not feeling bad for you.”

“I’ll walk him,” Mark offers, and Donghyuck gives him a grateful look. “Thanks for the ride, Jaemin-ah.”

“Yeah, of course,” Jaemin says. “See you guys later, ‘kay?”

Mark gives Jaemin a thumbs up, and then he and Donghyuck stand and watch his Volvo pull away from the curb and make a left turn out of sight.

Mark drops his bags on the doorstep of his house, and then they start towards Donghyuck’s house.

“Kind of crazy how quiet it got,” Donghyuck remarks. “The streetlamps are spooky, too. Makes it feel like the apocalypse is coming.”

“I like monsoon season,” Mark says. “When it gets dark at five and you can hear the thunder half a second after you see the lightning.”

Donghyuck shivers. “That’s always freaked me out. Remember when we were little and we’d hide in my parents’ closet when it stormed?”

“Yeah,” Mark says. “And you made me tell stories so you didn’t have to think about the rain.”

Donghyuck’s smile is affectionate. “That was nice.”

“My stories were literally about poop, Donghyuck. Like literal, actual _shit._ ”

Donghyuck shrugs. “Still nice.”

They walk another half-block in silence.

“I still can’t believe you told them the _Gangnam Style_ story,” Mark says, remembering it suddenly. Donghyuck’s answering laugh is almost too loud. “That is my most embarrassing moment. I wish I could go back in time and erase it from history.”

“Aw,” Donghyuck says, “no. I think it’s funny. When I was drunk and sad I’d think about it and it would make me laugh.”

“Your mom called an ambulance,” Mark points out. “I got five stitches. I had a black eye. There’s nothing funny about that. I was bleeding out of my _face._ ”

“Yeah, but you should’ve seen how you slipped,” Donghyuck says, wheeze-laughing. “Like a cartoon. It still cracks me up.” He takes a deep breath and straightens. “At least I didn’t tell them about the other stuff.”

“What other stuff?” Mark scoffs. “I think you got it all.”

“Like how you cried,” Donghyuck says. “Or how you thought you were going blind, and how I’ve never seen you that scared in my life.” His voice gets softer as he lists things off, and the mood abruptly switches.  “How you held my hand,” Donghyuck continues, and he stops walking so he can look Mark directly in the eye. “Or when you begged for your mom. Or when you just coming out from anesthesia and you looked at me and couldn’t remember my whole name but you recognized me, and said—”

“’You can let him in,” Mark finishes, voice barely above a whisper, “’that’s my best friend.’”

In the distance, thunder rumbles. The first drops of rain hit the sidewalk and bounce off of leaves.

Mark looks at Donghyuck, standing there with a nearly unreadable expression on his face, and some part of him starts to burn.

“When I thought I wasn’t going to make it,” Donghyuck whispers, talking a half-step closer, “me, all alone, lost in Seoul or overwhelmed in New York, I remembered that.”

All of the air is slowly being pulled from Mark’s lungs, but the fire still burns without oxygen. The desire to reach out is so strong it nearly knocks him off-balance.

At the same time, something inside of him rolls, sharp and bitter, and he can taste bile in his throat.

“That was so long ago,” Mark replies, and Donghyuck’s mouth draws up in a small smile.

“Yeah, but it was also the day I realized you loved me,” Donghyuck says. “And that no matter how far I went, you’d always give me shit.”

Mark doesn’t know who takes the next step, but all of a sudden Donghyuck’s close, close enough to smell the sunscreen and see his freckles and the smile creases around his eyes. Close enough to get _closer,_ to reach out—

They pause. A breath passes. Donghyuck’s eyelashes flutter, and Mark has the distant impression that he’s floating away, leaving his body.

And then Donghyuck is stepping away, and the space between them grows wide and cold. Mark blinks, every inch of his skin tingling.

“Thanks for today,” Donghyuck says, and then he’s gone, and Mark’s alone on the sidewalk, blinking and scrambling to put the pieces together. What had just happened?

No, a better question— _how_ had that just happened? How had both of them _let_ that happen?

The same marble of anxiety starts to roll around in his brain, and the panic begins to mount, constricting his throat and making his stomach turn uncomfortably.  

And as Mark’s brain starts to catch up, starts to assemble things, he notices a new piece—one he’d been pushing back against, a tiny, itchy question that had been scratching at the back of his mind for a week or so now, terrifying and disgusting and so, so exhausting. He doesn’t want it. He doesn’t want to do this. Doesn’t want to think about this—doesn’t want to _think_ , period.

But it’s there nonetheless, taking shape in the forefront of his mind.

He makes it back, somehow, through the panicked haze on his mind, pushing through the crippling anxiety that’s slowly forcing his body to shut down. The house, thankfully, is empty.

The rain picks up, heavy against the roof, and Mark collapses into his bed and cries.

 

* * *

 

Despite his exhaustion, he still dreams. It’s the same as it’s always been: hands on his hips, a kiss on his neck, his collarbone, his chest. The brush of soft hair against his rib cage.

Mark looks down, and is only partly surprised to see that the boy now has Donghyuck’s face. Desperation, hopelessness, and heavy, heavy resignation settle over him, and he tilts his face up towards the ceiling, feeling the corners of his eyes prickle.

Donghyuck sits up, bracing his hands on Mark’s thighs. “I told you it would get worse,” he says quietly.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Mark says, and it feels like he’s speaking underwater. “I don’t know what’s happening.”

Donghyuck presses a hand to Mark’s cheek, and turns his head sideways. There’s a mirror, and Mark can see himself in it, pink-cheeked and teary-eyed. And then the mirror version speaks.

“Nobody will love you,” mirror-him says. “Nobody will believe you. They’ll think you’re making it up. They’ll be grossed-out. They’ll—”

“Stop it,” Mark says, desperate. Each word in his own voice bites deep, shredding his heart and his lungs and filling him with pain. “I don’t—I’m not. I swear I’m not.” He turns his head away from the mirror and focuses on Donghyuck, who looks at him with such heartbreaking softness Mark nearly wakes up right then and there.

“You’ll be okay,” Donghyuck says, and slowly shifts into Mark’s lap, fingers fluttering across his ribcage. “I was.” He leans in, and his skin burns where it touches Mark’s, his mouth searing hot against his throat, under his chin, and down, down, down.

Donghyuck kisses him, and the mirror tells him he’s worthless. Mark is split in two, cleaved right down the middle, torn in half by the two different parts of the dream, each telling him something. Then he wakes up. His eyes are swollen and itchy, and his face is wet. He’d been crying while he’d dreamed, and for a minute he lies on his belly, feeling absolutely disgusting.

 _Donghyuck,_ he thinks, burying his face in his mattress. _Goddammit._

He’s unmoving for another minute as the last bits of the dream release their hold on him. Then he lifts himself out of bed, cranks the shower as cold as he can get it, and stands there until he no longer feels much of anything.

 

* * *

 

 

The summer wears on. July comes and so does the relentless heat, the five-second thunderstorms, and the oppressive humidity and buzz of the cicadas.

Mark loses sleep every night as he struggles to work through things, trying to sort his thoughts. He lies in bed and thinks, _am I valid? Will I ever get to live a normal life? Do I still get to be loved?_

And, the worst one— _will this change everything?_

It seems to change things between him and Donghyuck, at least. Donghyuck goes golden-pink and Mark’s shoulders burn and peel, and they spend the same amount of time together in the same places, only, it’s like every moment has been super-charged, and Mark fumbles over and over again. He flips between dread and a weird tingly sort of guilt as Donghyuck’s touches linger longer, and are more frequent—an arm around his shoulders, a knee against his own, fingers on the back of his neck. Or maybe Mark’s imagining things, and the only difference now is that he’s noticing _more_. Like the scabs on Donghyuck’s knees. Or the way his already-lightened hair has turned honey-colored, or the faint freckles on his eyelids.

Tension simmers between them. It feels like Mark’s holding his breath—only, he doesn’t know what for. A confrontation? A fistfight? Both? Donghyuck seems to know something he doesn’t, and his glances last eternity.

“Why do you keep looking at me?” Mark asks him one day, where they sit on a rotting bench at the fishery. Donghyuck’s brought him dinner, claiming that he was in the area and wanted to watch the sun set anyway.

“Sun’s in my eyes,” Donghyuck replies, squinting. “If I look anywhere else I’ll be blind.”

Mark stares at him for a moment, not sure if he buys that. Donghyuck continues eating casually.

“You’re being weird and evasive,” Mark mumbles, shoving more rice into his mouth.

Donghyuck snorts. “ _You’re_ being weird and evasive. Have you looked at yourself recently? You look like a ghost. Or a zombie.”

“Haven’t been sleeping too good,” Mark says. “Bad dreams.”

Donghyuck purses his lips, expression shifting from amused to concerned in a split-second. “About what?”

They play back in his mind—the mirror, Donghyuck’s hands, the poison and the nausea, the painful, coiled arousal. The endless staticky feeling that fills his mind after. He’s too tired afterwards to do anything but take a cold shower and lie numbly on top of the covers until he falls asleep.

He doesn’t tell Donghyuck any of this, though. How could he? How would be even broach the subject? _Hey, you’ve been in my dreams, I think I want to kiss a boy?_

 _Absolutely not_ , every part of Mark screams. _You’d ruin everything._

Still, Donghyuck waits, dinner set aside and his chin in his hands.

“Mark!” Yukhei calls from the doorway of the fishery. “Come in here! You’re going to want to see this!”

Mark stands, glad for the excuse. He’s about to say goodbye to Donghyuck, too, but he’s also standing and shows no signs of leaving. Mark frowns at him, confused. “Aren’t you—?”

“You’re off in twenty, right?” Donghyuck asks, checking the time on his phone. “Wanna go see a movie?”

Mark can’t say no. He can’t. Not when Donghyuck looks at him like that, like it’s just them, and he genuinely wants to do nothing else but watch a movie with him. “Sure,” Mark says, and Donghyuck _beams._

“MARK!” Yukhei shouts again, clearly very excited.

“Coming!” Mark calls back, and breaks into a jog towards the fishery. He can hear Donghyuck behind him, trying not to slip or trip on random boxes.

Taeil is bent over a microscope, and Yukhei is dancing from foot-to-foot behind him, clutching a composition notebook to his chest and beaming. “Holy _fuck,_ wait until Mrs. Shi sees this, she’s going to lose her _mind,_ ” Yukhei says.

“Hey, what’s going on?” Mark asks, crowding closer to Taeil. “Something good?”

Taeil looks up, so happy he looks like he might cry. Mark’s never seen him smile so widely.

“Three years ago I tagged a group of salmon migrating out towards the ocean,” Taeil says, gesturing, “because I’d been asked to monitor the population. We’d nearly fished them to extinction about a decade ago.”

He takes a deep breath. “I didn’t think any of them would survive and make it back here to lay eggs. But then I caught one.” Taeil points at the microscope, and Mark leans, where whatever Taeil’s got sampled is stained pink. “And it’s the same fish I tagged. And they kept coming, Mark, by the _hundreds._ Nearly all of them, back to spawn.” His eyes shine with tears, and Mark feels his heart tug too—excitement, hope, pride. He lets Taeil pull him into a hug. “We _can_ do it. We can make changes. This is proof.”

Yukhei whoops so loudly that his voice echoes off the walls of the fishery.

“Wow,” Donghyuck says, and Mark turns, having nearly forgotten he was there. He’s smiling, too, and looking at Mark with something warm and and unidentifiable written across his face. “I’ve never seen anyone so excited about fish.”

“Fish are the best,” Taeil says, pressing a hand to his heart. Yukhei laughs giddly, scribbling violently in his notebook. “I love my job.”

Mark smiles back at Donghyuck, and when their eyes meet, the same gut-wrenching feeling smacks him right in the solar plexus, knocking the wind from him. Every part of him screams for _something_ —what, he doesn’t necessarily know, but he doesn’t think he’s wanted anything so badly in his life.

They go and see the movie. It’s one of those silly buddy-cop ones, and Mark laughs too loudly and gets a few elbows in the rib from Donghyuck. Every time Mark looks over at him to comment, or to ask him what he thinks, Donghyuck’s already looking at him, cradling his bucket of popcorn with a funny look on his face.

Mark feels like he’s splitting in half.

Their friends notice, too, which makes it infinitely worse. Jaemin sidles up to him in the nosy way he’s prone to, and asks about girls and kissing and somehow slips Donghyuck in there, like he knows what’s been in Mark’s dreams.

“How do you even know he’s… _that?_ ” Mark accuses, and Jaemin gives him a flat look over the top of his sunglasses.

Mark’s not _really_ trying to ask about Donghyuck being gay anymore. He’s pretty sure on that front, ever since the party. Instead, he’s moved on to the sidewalk moment, which none of their friends know about, and thus the need for vagueness.

“You are _not_ asking me that right now,” Jaemin says, shocked. “You can’t be that dense. No way.”

“I’m just saying,” Mark mutters, turning away from Jaemin and watching Renjun and Jeno kick a soccer ball back forth. “He never…he never says anything. He’s always changing the subject, or, like, giving non-answers.”

“Because you never _ask,_ idiot,” Jaemin replies, kicking Mark in the shin. “You try to bait him into telling you things and he’s not going to because he’s smarter than you. And a bit of a coward, maybe.”

Mark looks down at his hands. His forearms are sunburned and peeling, and he picks at the skin while he thinks of a response.

“I don’t know,” he finally settles on, and Jaemin sighs heavily.

“If it’s really bothering you,” Jaemin says, sounding resigned, “you really should just ask. He’s your best friend, Mark. He won’t get mad.”

 _But we’ve been very purposefully_ not _talking about it,_ Mark thinks to himself later that night as he lies in bed, the fan on his bedside turned on as high as it can go to beat the oppressive humidity. And it’s true—Donghyuck’s avoided the topic like the plague since that day on the sidewalk. Mark’s never seen anyone change the subject so fast. And it’s been fine, too, for the most part; if Donghyuck doesn’t want to talk about it then they won’t.

But there’s still a little curious part of him that wants to ask about all the looks, about the things that settle and smolder between them, about that time in the rain when they’d been so close that they’d nearly—

He squeezes his eyes shut, twisting a hand in the front of his shirt. _They’d nearly kissed._

It’s not something he would’ve thought about before this summer. It’s not something he would’ve noticed so intently, if Donghyuck hadn’t burst back into his life, very confident and all grown up. He wouldn’t be lying awake night after night, turning endless questions over in his head about kissing guys and then kissing _Donghyuck,_ who’d been with that boy at the party. Mark remembers it—remembers the noises he’d made, the way the skin on his neck had been flushed afterwards.

The thought triggers a flash of heat, and he takes a steadying breath. At night, here, it’s easier to face the truth: he wants Donghyuck. His best friend. Who’s a guy. Who’s somehow flipped everything upside down.

But then this sends him catapulting into despair and panic verging on hysteria—he wants Donghyuck but he also wants to go back to _before_. He wants to touch but he also doesn’t want things to change. He wants to figure shit out, but he also wants to dissolve into his bed and stop existing.

 _You really should just ask,_ Jaemin had said.

Mark rolls onto his stomach, feeling just as lost and anxious as before. _God. If only it were that easy._

 

* * *

 

It’s a bright Saturday morning when the storm begins to roll in.

Mina’s doing homework and eating breakfast, and Mark is going through next month’s orders when their father turns on the TV.

“—predicted heaviest rainfall of the summer,” the reporter is saying. “We’re in the midst of monsoon season, but it might be the worst storm Gangwon-do has seen in over fifty years.”

Their dad clicks his tongue. “Fifty years, jeez. Hey, Mina-yah, will you help me clean the yard before it rains? The trash can blew over in the last windstorm.”

“Only if Mark helps too,” Mina says immediately, and when Mark glares, she sticks her tongue out. “It’s only fair, Dad. Plus it’ll get done faster.”

“Someone needs to watch the store,” their father says. “I don’t care which of you it is, but I need you both to help out today.”

Mark thinks about the humidity and the heat. The idea of doing manual labor at this time of day makes him slightly queasy, and he’d much rather sit in the air-conditioned store and drink soda.

Mina turns to him, her fist resting on her palm. “Rock paper scissors,” she says, eyes narrowed. “Loser has to work in the yard.”

They play five rounds until Mark loses, which makes Mina crow victoriously and knock her glass of orange juice over.

They finish breakfast and clean up. Mark peers worriedly at the sky as he puts on his shoes. The sky is already darkening on the horizon, ominous and looming.

“Going to be a bad one for sure,” his dad says, passing by with a box of garbage bags. “Should pass quickly, though.”

“Oppa, come help me with the register!” Mina calls from the shop. “It’s doing the thing again!”

“I’ll get a head start,” his dad says, nodding towards the backyard. “Help your sister.”

Mina is banging on the top of the cash register with a fist, her brow wrinkled. “This thing is so stupid,” she mutters, hitting it again. “We should get a new one.”

“You hitting it is probably why it’s broken,” Mark points out, and Mina’s scowl deepens.

“Just fix it,” she says. “I’m going to turn on the sign and unlock the door.”

Mark leans in towards the register, and he’s just got the cash drawer unstuck when the bell over the door chimes. He looks up and is both unsurprised and a bit nervous when it’s Donghyuck, wearing a baseball cap and a t-shirt with the sleeves rolled. He looks put-together and too clean for their tiny little shop. When he sees Mark, his face brightens and he waves. “Hi, Mark,” he says. “Are you in the shop today?”

“No, I am,” Mina says, coming around the chip shelf. “Mark lost rock paper scissors so now he has to clean the yard.”

Donghyuck laughs. “Nice. He’s terrible at that game, so I’m not surprised.”

Mark ignores him, and the cash drawer dings open so quickly it hits him hard on the cheek. There’s a brief second where he hopes Donghyuck didn’t see, but then Donghyuck’s laughing again and Mark wants to sink into the ground forever.

“Okay, Mina, it’s fixed,” he says, ignoring the stinging in his cheek. “I’m going outside to help Dad.”

“Thanks, oppa,” she says, skipping over and hopping up on the stool. “Have fun picking up trash!”

Mark comes around the counter to stand by Donghyuck.

“That’s probably gonna bruise,” Donghyuck teases, poking his cheek. Mark slaps his hand away.

“I’m going to tell everyone you punched me if it does,” Mark says.

“Aw, I’d never punch you,” Donghyuck pouts, and Mark’s whole face feels like it’d been hit with the cash drawer. “I’m too sweet. And besides, you’d never say that because you like me too much.”

Mark swallows back every rebuke he has, the majority _way_ too flirty (and thus, panic-inducing) to say aloud. Donghyuck, taking his silence as victory, just grins and blinks innocently at him, which makes Mark feel like he’s on fire.

“You’re unbelievable,” he decides on at last, turning away from Donghyuck. “Okay, I’ve really gotta clean the yard. Sorry you came by for nothing.” He’s about to wave goodbye and firmly usher Donghyuck out the door, but Donghyuck digs his heels into the linoleum, putting his hands on Mark’s shoulders to stop him.

“I’ll help,” he says brightly, and Mark’s stomach drops down to his knees. “Then it’ll get done faster, and then we can hang out.”

“It’ll be raining by then,” Mark says weakly. “You’ll be bored if you’re trapped in here.”

Donghyuck shrugs. “It’s fine if we just sit in your room. You’ve got games.”

Mark opens his mouth again, desperately searching for another excuse, but can’t find anything else. Donghyuck’s got him cornered.

“Fine,” Mark relents, and Donghyuck grins, putting an arm around Mark’s waist and guiding them both to the yard.

“Oh, Donghyuck-ah,” Mark’s father exclaims, his face smiling. “How are you? I see you around so often nowadays. I’m glad you and Mark are friends again.”

“I’m well, Mr. Lee,” Donghyuck says, and props an arm on one of Mark’s shoulders. The warmth of his skin bleeds through the fabric of Mark’s t-shirt, and Mark is suddenly self-conscious of how close they’re standing. He shakes Donghyuck off and tries to make a break for it. Donghyuck, barely phased, just loops a finger through a belt loop on Mark’s shorts and holds him in place.

“—and I was thinking I’d offer my help,” Donghyuck is saying, and _when_ did he get so strong? Back when they were younger, he weighed nothing and Mark could toss him off the bed with one hand. But now, no matter how hard he tugs, Donghyuck doesn’t budge, grounding Mark, keeping him within the infectious bubble of laundry-smelling warmth that hovers around him.

Distantly, Mark wonders if any of their other friends have noticed said bubble, or if they’re a) sane or b) used to Donghyuck’s touchiness to the point where they just don’t think about it.

“That would be wonderful,” Mark’s father replies while Mark makes one last futile effort to get free of Donghyuck. It doesn’t work, and he realizes both Donghyuck and his dad are looking expectantly in his direction, waiting for a response.

“Oh, uh, thanks,” Mark says, slowly reaching behind him and trying to pull Donghyuck’s finger out of his belt loop. “It means a lot.”  

Donghyuck smirks at him, absolutely aware of Mark’s discomfort and clearly enjoying it. Mark doesn’t know how to take that—if it’s a joke? Or not? Does Donghyuck _know,_ somehow? Is he thinking about that time a couple weeks ago in the rain? The Almost-Moment?

His father is running through a list of things they have to do, but Mark can only hear his heartbeat and the blood rushing in his ears as Donghyuck runs his fingers up the back of Mark’s hand, and for a moment, time seems to slow. Donghyuck’s looking at Mark curiously, head tilted slightly. He’s asking a question Mark can’t quite figure out, and this somehow feels like a test.

Mark lets out a slow breath. He doesn’t move his hand, but he also doesn’t jerk away.

Mark’s father claps loudly, and the moment shatters. Time goes back to normal, and Mark mentally slaps himself for getting worked-up about it. He’s turning into a lead from a K-drama. His _whole life_ is turning into a K-drama, one of those sappy ones with a repetitive OST and a lot of slo-mo moments, the kind his mom likes.

The work is sweaty and tiresome, as Mark had initially predicted. The humidity only gets worse as the clouds creep in, and the sunlight fades. The air fills with the heavy, earthly smell of rain and there’s a tingle on Mark’s tongue, like ozone and the threat of something big. He and Donghyuck clean up the trash, and then he helps his dad move all of the furniture into the shed, straining against the weight of the chairs and table. Donghyuck, at this point, isn’t much help, instead opting to make snide commentary as Mark, sweaty and red-faced, drags stuff across the grass. When Mark’s back is turned, however, and he goes back to bench-pressing wicker chairs, Donghyuck’s gaze sharpens, heats, until it’s nearly a tangible thing on the back of Mark’s neck. He never catches Donghyuck in the act—he’s too quick, too practiced, expecting the whip of Mark’s head. And that gets Mark thinking, because no matter what Jaemin says, he _isn’t_ as dense than a brick wall (he _isn’t!_ ). How _long_ has Donghyuck been looking at him like that? A couple weeks? The whole summer?

_Years?_

Mark shakes his head, feeling silly and slightly nauseated. He’s making things up, grasping at straws—and the straws are also in a huge burning fire of nonsensical, dangerous bullshit, and the fire’s named Donghyuck. Because that’s _exactly_ what’s going on here.

He fights back a blush and wipes his suddenly-sweaty hands on the front of his shirt.

There’s a slow, halting _pat-pat-pat_ noise on the roof of the shed. At once, all three of them look up to the cloudy sky.

The storm’s finally here.

“Well, looks like that’s that,” Mark’s father says, and his voice sounds oddly loud in the pressurized silence that’s gradually being drawn over them, like they’re a tunnel or far underwater. “Good work, boys. And thank you for your help, Donghyuck-ah.”

Mark wipes his face with his shirt, and the sound of the rain picks up. A few cold drops hit the back of his neck, and distantly, he can hear thunder begin to rumble.

“I’m going inside to shower,” Mark says, “if we’re done.”

“We’re all done,” Mark’s father confirms. “I’ll go check on your sister. Go get Donghyuck something to drink from the fridge before you go up.”

Mark, who’d been seconds away from giving Donghyuck an umbrella and sending him home, sighs resignedly. “Sure.” He gestures at Donghyuck to follow him back into the house.

“Nice of your dad to let me stay,” Donghyuck says as they step into the kitchen. There’s a amused tilt to his voice that tells Mark he knew he’d be kicked out if Mark had his way. “I’m glad I don’t have to walk home in the rain.”

Mark opens the fridge, not taking the bait. “What do you want to drink?”

“Coke,” Donghyuck says, but Mark’s already tossing him the can of soda before he can finish answering. It’s all customary, anyway—he’s been friends with Donghyuck for so long, and some things just don’t change. Like favorite sodas.

Donghyuck smiles at him and opens the can, and Mark lets him lead the way up to his bedroom. With one last glance out the window at the bruised sky and the strengthening rain, Mark follows.

 

* * *

 

He takes a cold shower, rinsing both sweat and the heat of Donghyuck’s gaze from his skin. He stands under the spray for a few minutes, listening to the thunder over the roar of the shower. It’s moving closer with each passing minute, and the house begins to shake with the force of it. By the time he gets out, it’s pitch black outside and Donghyuck’s turned on all the lights and is playing a round of Super Smash Bros against a bunch of CPUs. They both watch the screen for a moment, Donghyuck’s Kirby bodily launching King Dedede off the screen with a flash.

“Shower’s open if you want it,” Mark says, and Donghyuck pauses his game and turns. “I’m going to take a nap.”

“What if I want to take a nap too?” Donghyuck pouts.

“Tough luck,” Mark says. “Sleep on the floor.” He looks away and flops face-first into his bed before Donghyuck can ask to have it. He’s asleep within minutes, soothed by the sound of the storm, the fan, and the noise of Donghyuck’s game.

He hasn’t had a dream in a few days, so of course his brain picks _now_ to have it. He knows he’s not sleeping deeply, because he can still vaguely hear the rain and feel the blanket over his legs. But that doesn’t stop the dream from being clearer than it’s ever been—technicolor and vivid, nothing like the half-smear of color from the previous ones.

Donghyuck is there, like he always is, pulling at threads and threatening to unspool everything Mark’s carefully stitched together. The seams of his mind strain and he struggles to keep his thoughts in. It’s like trying to keep marbles from spilling out of an open bag.

There is a frantic, heated pace to things this time, and the dream moves so quickly it’s just flashes, and feelings—warmth in his mouth, warmth on his chest, a hand sliding past the waistband of his shorts.

“Donghyuck,” Mark says, breathless.

“Mark,” Donghyuck says, but his mouth doesn’t move from where it’s pressed against Mark’s hipbone.

“Mark.”

His brain stutters, halts, restarts. Donghyuck says his name again, and Mark begins to realize it’s _outside_ of the dream. That’s enough to tug him from sleep, and he sits up with a start, sweaty and out-of-breath. Donghyuck’s got a knee on the end of Mark’s bed, halfway on the mattress. He freezes when he sees that Mark’s awake, eyes widening.

“You…” Donghyuck starts haltingly, “uh, you said my name.”

Fear spikes in Mark’s stomach, and he clutches the blankets closer to him, trying to hide the flush on his skin and the way his chest is heaving. “I—I did?”

Donghyuck nods slowly, not taking his eyes off Mark.

“I was having a dream,” Mark says, scrambling for a lie. “A bad one. You were—you were—”

“It didn’t sound like a nightmare,” Donghyuck says carefully, like he doesn’t want to startle Mark. “It sounded like—”

Mark takes a deep breath and holds it. Donghyuck pauses, eyes dark and considering. Something hovers in the air between them, trembling and humming with potential. Donghyuck bites the corner of his lip, considering, and half of Mark screams for him to run. The other half, on the other hand, is burning him from the inside, melting him down until he’s nothing but smoke.

“Why’d you say my name, Mark?” Donghyuck asks softly.

Mark cannot, for the life of him, find an excuse. His mouth opens but no words come from it. He’s not sure that he could speak if he tried.

For a second, it’s just the sound of the rain. Then Donghyuck is surging forward, and then they’re kissing, messy and all over the place and not-at-all perfect. It takes them one try, two tries, before their mouths are actually aligned, and Mark’s only kissed one other person before so it’s awkward, at first, trying to keep up with Donghyuck. But then Donghyuck sighs, puts a hand on the back of Mark’s neck, and settles onto his knees, between Mark’s legs. It’s easier still when Donghyuck coaxes Mark’s mouth open, and with the gentle sweep of his tongue comes guilt and relief in equal measure. But the tension drops off of his shoulders and the anxiety unknots from his stomach, and it’s such a nice feeling to be kissed and not on the verge of a mental breakdown that Mark gives in for a moment and just stops thinking. He just winds his arms around Donghyuck’s waist and pulls him closer. Donghyuck makes a surprised, pleased noise and cups Mark’s face, tugging gently at his bottom lip with his teeth.

They kiss for what feels like forever. Mark has to break away to breathe, but Donghyuck doesn’t let him go, only kisses up and down his neck over and over, fingers sliding underneath his t-shirt and ghosting over his hip bones. Mark runs his hands up and down Donghyuck’s sides, over his rib cage and waist, over his shirt and under it. His thumbs dig into Donghyuck’s thighs at some point, for balance, to ground him, to remind him that this is real and not a dream.

“I hate these shorts,” Mark gasps at some point, and Donghyuck laughs into the crook of Mark’s neck, teeth against skin. “You—legs.”

“Sorry,” Donghyuck says, not sounding sorry at all, and goes back to making hickies on Mark’s collarbones.

Mark’s lost feeling in his fingers by now, and his mouth is tingling. He’s cracked into pieces by now, completely undone. So he blurts, “I’ve wanted to kiss you since the first party.”

“And I’ve wanted to kiss you since seventh grade,” Donghyuck admits, barely above a whisper.

Mark pulls away at that, and meets Donghyuck’s eyes for the first time they started kissing.

Maybe it’s the pink shine to Donghyuck’s mouth, or the way the fan blows over his hair. Maybe it’s the way his shorts hitch up over his thighs, or maybe it’s the unexpected, vulnerable look on his face.

Either way, the trembling thing between them drops and shatters, and the reality of the what they’d just done—and the _consequences of it—_ comes crashing down over Mark’s head like a bucket of ice water.

“Mark?” Donghyuck asks, and there’s so much raw affection in his voice that the dam in Mark’s chest bursts and he finally breaks down and begins to sob. He doesn’t even have time to turn away or hide his face.  

“Oh, god,” Donghyuck says, sounding vaguely panicked. “Did I hurt you? Did I do something wrong? Are you okay?”

“No,” Mark says, and can feel parts of him locking up, his brain trying to shut everything down before he can get more hurt. The nasty, jagged thing pulses in his chest, and he chokes on another wave of tears.

 _Go back,_ a piece of him sobs. _I want to go back._

Donghyuck reaches out, but Mark kicks at the bedsheets to put distance between them, scrambling away from Donghyuck. Hurt flickers across Donghyuck's face, but he quickly schools it into something more caring.

“Hey, talk to me,” Donghyuck says, and _god,_ how many times has he said that? A thousand? A million? “Mark, what can I do?”

“Get out of here,” Mark mutters, covering his eyes. “You’re making it worse. You _made_ it worse. If only—if only you hadn’t—”

“Oh, I _dare_ you to finish that sentence,” Donghyuck says, and everything gentle about him turns to steel in a second. Mark can hear the hurt in his voice. “You _kissed me back!_ ”

“You started something I never wanted to think about,” Mark replies, wishing he too could yell. But even now, he can't bring himself to shout at Donghyuck. “Things got so fucked up ever since you got back—with your new hair, and stuff.”  

The bed shifts, and Mark lowers his hands. Donghyuck’s scowling ferociously, arms crossed. He’s furious, but Mark’s known him for long enough to see the pain underneath the anger. “You suddenly finding me hot wasn’t _just_ because I dyed my hair, jackass,” Donghyuk snaps. At Mark’s dark expression, his scowl deepens. “What, you think I didn’t notice? I’m not _stupid,_ you know. I have feelings too, and they’re being _really fucking hurt right now!”_

There are two pink spots sitting high in his cheeks, and his eyes are dangerously bright. Mark curls back into his pillows, feeling guilty.

But not guilty enough to stop the anger, his one final defense. “Yeah, well, what about me?”

“What about you?” Donghyuck scoffs, derisive. “You’re not special, Mark. You’re not the first one to have a gay crisis.”

The word _gay_ stings like he’d been slapped and burned at the same time. “I—”

“Don’t wanna hear it,” Donghyuck says, holding up a hand. “I just thought—” His voice breaks here, and the first of his tears spill from his eyes. He wipes them away angrily, but they keep coming. “I just thought,” he continues, “that wouldn’t be an _asshole_ to me, just like you always are when I ask what’s wrong. You _always_ shut me out, Mark, and it really fucking sucks.”

“Donghyuck,” Mark says weakly, but Donghyuck’s full-on crying now, and he’s said his bit.

“Don’t bother t-texting,” he stutters, burying his face in the crook of his elbow, “until you’ve got your head out of your ass.”

He turns on his heel, and before Mark can process it, he’s already vanished down the staircase. A minute later, he can hear the back door slam.

The silence in his room is deafening. His head spins and his mouth and neck still tingle, but every other part of him feels like it’s been frozen solid, completely devoid of warmth or life.

“I have fucked up,” he announces to the empty room, matter-of-fact, before folding over and bursting into tears once again.

 

* * *

 

His sister comes by much later, after he’s exhausted himself and is scrolling blankly through his phone just so he can give himself something to do. She’s holding a plate covered in plastic wrap, rapping her knuckles on the doorframe to get his attention.

“Dad sent this up,” she says. “Do you want it?”

“I’m good,” he says, not bothering to look up.  

“You’re moping.”

“I’m not. I’m fine.”

“Oppa, I heard you crying all the way downstairs.”

Mark drops his phone and scowls at her. “I’m _fine._ ”

Mina huffs, crossing into his room and setting the plate down on his desk. “This has to do with Donghyuck running out of the house, doesn’t it?”

“No.”

Mina grabs a pillow off the floor and hurls it at Mark, smacking him directly in the face. “You can push your friends out, you can push Dad out, but I’m your _sister._ ” She crosses her arms, glaring. “ _Talk_ to me.”

Mark drops his phone. Opens his mouth. Closes it.

“I don’t know where to start,” he mumbles, twisting his fingers together. “It’s…hard to say.”

“I’m not going to get mad,” Mina says patiently, sitting on the foot of his bed. “And I’m not going to hate you.”

Mark takes a deep, deep breath, and feels like he’s teetering on the edge of a drop far longer than he thinks.

“Donghyuck and I kissed,” he says quietly.

God, he hopes there’s a soft landing at the bottom.

His sister stares at him for a long moment, and then exhales. “Okay. I, um. I wasn’t expecting that, but…go on.”

Mark gauges her reaction, but there’s no disgust, no anger in her face. So he continues, and tells her the whole story from start to finish.

“And now I think I’ve fucked it up for good,” Mark concludes, and flops back against his pillows. “He’s probably _so_ mad at me.”

“He slammed the door,” Mina reminds him. “He’s pretty upset. I would be too, though, if someone said that to me. He’s also probably sad.”

“Sad?”

Mina squints at him, like she really can’t believe Mark doesn’t understand. “Yeah, _sad._ You were making out—”

“Don’t put it like that, oh my god—”

“—and then you pull away and try to blame him for a bunch of stuff and tell him he should go. That’d make _anyone_ sad, dense dumb boy or not.”

Mark groans and drops his head into his hands. “You’re not helping at all.”

Mina nods at his phone, sitting silent next to him. “You know who you should talk to?”

“If you say Jaemin—”

“Renjun,” Mina says matter-of-factly. “And Jaemin. And Jeno. Maybe all of them at once? They know Donghyuck really well, and they also know you. _And_ they’re your friends.”

On cue, his phone buzzes with a text from Renjun:

_ok so hey awkward I know but did you by any chance…make Donghyuck cry?_

Mark eyes his phone. “I don’t know what I’m going to say to them, either.”

“The exact same thing you told me,” Mina says, encouraging. “You can do it, oppa. Be brave.”

Mark blinks at her for a second, wondering when she’d gotten so grown-up. He feels a rush of affection in his chest for her all of a sudden, and it’s sibling telepathy that has them both leaning in at the same time, Mina’s arms wrapping tightly around his waist. Her chin digs into his shoulder, and Mark can feel her shaking a little.

“You’re still my stupid brother,” she tells him as they part, tearing up. She rubs at her eyes. “No matter what. You know that, right?”

“Right,” Mark says, and the smile she gives him makes him feel brave.

 

* * *

 

He meets his friends at the tiny playground equidistant from all of their houses. Jaemin’s last to arrive, but not by much—Mark’s text had been pretty urgent. Chenle and Jisung are there, the former unusually quiet. Renjun’s grim-faced, and Jeno looks a little worried, but they all sit silently as they wait for Mark to sort out his thoughts and find the right thing to say. When he realizes there isn’t an easy way through this, he decides to start at the beginning, just like he did with Mina.

“So, um,” he starts, half-embarrassed and half-terrified, “Donghyuck and I kissed.”

Jeno’s mouth drops open. “ _What_ ,” he blurts. Renjun and Jaemin exchange surprised looks, and Mark’s stomach sinks.

“You and Donghyuck _kissed?_ ” Chenle repeats loudly, and Jisung kicks his shin.

“Do you have to share it with the whole world?” He mutters, and Chenle looks guilty.

“Sorry,” he says, much quieter. “I’m just…”

“We’re a little surprised,” Jaemin fills in. “Like, with Donghyuck, it was sorta more…obvious, you know? The whole, uh, kissing boys thing.” Jaemin’s cheeks go pink, and he looks mildly embarrassed.

Mark purses his lips, confused and maybe a bit hurt. “Hey, don’t you think it’s a little unfair to judge people based on—”

“That’s not what he’s saying,” Renjun jumps in quickly. “With Donghyuck, it was an open secret. Jaemin knew because Donghyuck _told_ him.”

Mark deflates. “Oh.”

Jaemin gives him an apologetic smile. “I should’ve clarified. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too,” Jeno jumps in. “I’m not surprised because it’s a guy, or because it’s _you._ I’m surprised that it’s _Donghyuck,_ is all. I didn’t see that one coming.”

“I did,” Jisung pipes up, entirely unhelpful.

“Shut up,” Jeno informs him.

“Are you kidding,” Renjun adds flatly. “Mark’s exactly Donghyuck’s type.”

Mark shudders, and Jeno makes a face. “Can we _not_ ,” Mark says, trying hard to steer the conversation back. “I seriously have an issue, guys. I really messed up.”

He fills them in on everything that had happened, and by the end of it, Jeno looks exasperated, Jaemin’s on the verge of laughing, and Renjun looks thoughtful. Chenle and Jisung, meanwhile, look extraordinarily entertained.

“Funny how the worst possible outcome was the one you got,” Chenle points out, wheezing a bit. “Like, everything that could’ve gone wrong _did._ ”

“You need to talk to him,” Jaemin says. “Soon.”

“Duh,” Jeno tells Jaemin, hitting him on the shoulder.

“It sounds like you need to sort some things through first,” Renjun offers. “Even though I know you don’t want to.”

Jeno nods in agreement. “Like, a truce. But with yourself.”

“You’re tearing yourself apart,” Renjun says. “You’re killing yourself over it.”

“I don’t know if I _can,_ ” Mark says, rubbing his face. “Like, I don’t think I’m there yet. I dunno. Am I making any sense?”

Jisung shrugs. “Not really.”

“Sort of,” Jaemin says. “Personally, I don’t think it matters what you call it right now. I think what’s important is that you sort stuff out with yourself, and then with Donghyuck.”

“He likes you a lot, you know,” Jeno says, and Mark’s face burns, and he remembers he feeling of Donghyuck’s mouth on his. “You guys being friends again was the best thing that happened to him all summer.”

“I can confirm it,” Jaemin says, slinging an arm around Jeno’s shoulders. “I was there when he said it.”

“I don’t think…” he starts slowly, “that I’ve wanted something so much in my whole life.”

His friends blink at him for a moment.

“Disgusting,” Jeno decides finally. “I never want you to say anything like that again.”

“Aw, I think it’s sweet,” Jaemin rebukes, and they diverge from the conversation to argue.

“I think you should go for it, then,” Renjun says, patting Mark’s knee. “Just don’t be a dumbass, and you’ll be just fine.”

 

* * *

 

Renjun forgets that Mark is, unfortunately, a dumbass through and through. But at least he’s trying this time.

The sky is clear as night begins to fall, and Mark helps his dad do the dishes, thinking hard. After, he goes up to his room and opens the window, lying in his bed and slowly picking at the knotted mess that is his mind. His thoughts are tangled, unimaginably so, and bile rises in his stomach as he tosses words around like _Donghyuck_ and _feelings_ and _maybe I like him_. But the fact that he can even think it in the first place is progress, and, he tells himself, also a fine place to start.

He doesn’t get very far. It’s hard, and more exhausting than he anticipated. And there’s too much to think through, and too much to undo. He’s got a whole lifetime of internalized bullshit to undo, and a lot of truths to admit—crushes in fourth grade, idols he thought were hot, and of course, Donghyuck. Donghyuck in eighth grade. Donghyuck earlier. Donghyuck since a while, maybe. Which is terrifying to think about, honestly. At least, it is right now.

So he focuses on this summer. Yesterday. The last few weeks. The looking, the touching, the way Donghyuck had kissed him in the dim light of the storm and told him, _since seventh grade._

He falls asleep after a little while, lulled by the slow roll of his thoughts. They’re slightly bitter, but they no longer threaten to tear his mind apart.

And for the first time in a long time, he sleeps without dreaming.

 

* * *

 

He texts Donghyuck the next evening, just before dinner. He’d put it off as long as he could, sort of dreading it—Donghyuck holds grudges for approximately seven years, which is a real number because once Mark accidentally released a fish he’d caught in a jar when they were six and Donghyuck hadn’t forgiven him until his thirteenth birthday.

But eventually the nervous knot in his stomach eases, and he gets antsy as he waits for Donghyuck’s response. He doesn’t know what he’s going to say—everything he tries out in his head sounds stupid or too cheesy or not _really_ what he means. He doesn’t want to screw this up a second time.

His friends are only _mostly_ unhelpful, which is a first for the majority of them. He’s chewing on the inside of his cheek when Donghyuck finally texts back, just as Mark’s dad gets to the table and tells him to put his phone away.

_yeah meet halfway in 20?_

Mark has never eaten so quickly in his life. He drops half the food in his lap and ignores the confused looks his dad and sister give him, excusing himself from the table, dumping his dishes in the sink and heading for the door.

“Wait wait wait,” his father interrupts, holding up a hand. “Where are you off to so late at night?”

“Promised Donghyuck I’d meet him,” Mark says, shoving his feet into his sneakers without untying the laces.

His sister gives him a long, meaningful look, eyebrows raised. Mark nods once, and she gives him a small smile. _Good luck,_ she mouths at him. _You can do it._

He starts down the street, heart slamming against his rib cage.

“Hi, Donghyuck,” he starts aloud. “I just wanted to explain…no, that sounds like I’m trying to get out of it.” He clears his throat and tries again. “Hey. So, uh, I know I acted really bad—okay, I can’t say that either.” He sighs, rubbing his hands over his face. “I can’t do this.”

“Mark?” Donghyuck’s voice is quiet enough that Mark originally thinks he imagined it. But there he is, wearing a yellow t-shirt and those stupid Adidas shorts, cast in the light of the slowly-setting sun.

“Hi,” Mark says, awkward. It’s like when they’d first met at the beginning of the summer, when they didn’t know how much had changed.

Turns out, not much. Just a few things. He still knows the expression Donghyuck’s making, upset but not unreasonable. The only difference now is that Donghyuck’s face makes his heart speed just a little, makes his fingertips tingle and his palms sweat.

“Let’s walk?” Donghyuck offers, pointing a random direction.

“Sure,” Mark says, and falls into step next to him.

The first couple minutes are quiet save for the whir of cicadas and occasional car passing. Mark gathers his thoughts; he thinks Donghyuck’s doing the same.

“I’m sorry,” Mark says at last, unable to stand the awkwardness.

“I didn’t mean to yell,” Donghyuck blurts at the same time, and then laughs. “Sorry. You go first.”

Mark swallows nervously and fixes his eyes on his feet. “I’m sorry.”

Donghyuck waits, expectant.

“I didn’t mean to close off like that,” Mark says. “I, uh. I just…I needed to work through some things, and I panicked. It was going fast.” He quickly backtracks when Donghyuck raises an eyebrow. “I’m not trying to make excuses. It wasn’t okay for me to snap at you like that, or just shut you out. It, uh, I know I hurt your feelings, and…I’m sorry. I really, really am.”

His voice, to his embarrassment, cracks on the last few words. His face burns, but Donghyuck’s whole face has softened. Mark still can’t meet his eyes, though, so he settles with focusing on his ears, his chin, his mouth—

 _No no no wait,_ he thinks, derailed. _Not yet._

“I know you didn’t mean to hurt me,” Donghyuck says, “and that’s why I’m not too mad. I _am_ pissed, however, that you shut me out. I know you talked to our other friends—and I guess…I guess I wished you would’ve opened up to me too.”

Mark opens his mouth, but Donghyuck isn’t done. “I didn’t mean to shout at you, or rush you, or push you. This is…this is just something I’ve wanted for _so_ long, and I never thought…I never thought it would happen.” He twists his hands in the hem of t-shirt. “It was just easier when we weren’t friends, and I could pretend that every part of you didn’t make me feel so comfortable.”

Mark feels like he can’t breathe. “And now?”

Donghyuck stops, and Mark bumps into him. The backs of their hands brush, and Donghyuck nods at the ocean, visible over the low holding wall, glittering like liquid gold in the sun. Wordlessly, they cross the road and towards the bench sitting just behind the wall. Donghyuck sits, and Mark has a sudden memory of sixth grade, when he and Donghyuck had stopped here often to play _Pokémon_ on Donghyuck’s DS.

“Hey, remember when we used to play—” Mark starts, turning towards Donghyuck.

“ _Pokémon_?” Donghyuck finishes, smiling. Their eyes meet, and Mark’s heart does something pathetic in his chest.

“Yeah,” he breathes, hardly daring to blink. Donghyuck watches him closer, a small smile on his face.

“Now I can’t pretend,” Donghyuck says, and Mark is thrown off for a second before he remembers the question he’d asked before. He looks out over the water, sun on his face and in his hair, and the truth is all of a sudden very simple.

He’s kissed Donghyuck. He likes Donghyuck. And that—that will not end his world. It doesn’t make him any less _okay_. He still deserves love.

It feels like the first breath of air he’s taken in months, and it’s a call to courage he didn’t know he had.

“I like you,” Mark bursts out, unable to keep it in any longer. It’s poorly-timed, he knows, and it hangs awkwardly in the air between them. Donghyuck stares at him, incredulous, and Mark cringes, opening his mouth to apologize.

“I like you too,” Donghyuck replies before Mark can say anything. His cheeks are turning pink, but at the same time, wonder and happiness is filling his face, lighting his eyes and tugging at the corners of his lips. “I like you a lot.”

Mark feels like he’s going to burst. The smile on his face nearly hurts, and the following kiss is weird—they’re both laughing, and it’s more teeth than anything else, but it’s good, it’s relieving, and it’s more than Mark ever could’ve imagined.

Donghyuck takes his hand after, and very gently sets his head on Mark’s shoulder. The sun goes down over the water. Things are quiet at last.

And that, Mark thinks, is that.

 

* * *

 

The summer is over far too quickly.

He and Donghyuck keep things as low-key as they can, but Jaemin eventually catches on and after that, _everyone_ knows. Or, mostly everyone. Jeno plays mediator and keeps people from coming up to either of them and poking at them like specimens.

So they hold hands under the table and kiss in the dark and lie in Mark’s bed with the covers off, sometimes talking, sometimes not. Sometimes they just sit for a long time and scroll through Instagram or play video games and not say a word. But Donghyuck has his ankle hooked around Mark’s or will lean into him, and that is more than anything either of them can say.

And then school starts again, and the faraway future becomes the now, which makes Donghyuck tear up. He leaves with just as much drama and flair as he’d arrived, groups of friends stopping by the bus stop to see him off. But Donghyuck doesn’t ever stray far from Mark, who is trying very hard to be stoic and neutral about the whole thing.

He fails miserably, of course, so Donghyuck kisses him behind a ticket booth, long and hard, and tells him not to look so sad. They emerge pink-cheeked and in noticeably better moods, the backs of their hands brushing.

“Okay, you’ve gotta go,” Jaemin says, checking his phone. “Or you’ll miss your bus.”

“Aw,” Donghyuck says. “If I missed it, do you think I could drop out and go to school with you guys?”

“Hyuck,” Mark says, and Donghyuck turns to him and pouts. Mark pouts back, unable to help it, and Jaemin makes a gagging noise.  “Thanks, Jaemin. I actually have something to show you.”

He digs around for his phone and pulls up the confirmation email—a bus ticket he’d bought a few nights ago, set to leave for Seoul a few weeks from now. Donghyuck reads it, and his eyes widen. “You’re—you’re coming to visit?”

“Do you not want me to?” Mark asks, confused. “I can—”

The rest of his words are cut off by Donghyuck, who throws himself at Mark and hugs him tightly.

“Thank you so much,” Donghyuck mumbles, burying his face in Mark’s shoulder. “I thought—”

“I know what you thought,” Mark replies. “So if you want to, I’m down.”

Donghyuck pulls back, wiping his eyes. “Yes. Absolutely.”

“Wow,” Jeno says from behind them. “Hey, Renjun, look at that. Romance _isn’t_ dead.”

Mark ignores them, focusing instead on Donghyuck’s smile, which is brighter than anything Mark’s ever seen—courageous, hopeful, and reassuring.

In fact, it’s something that looks an awful lot like love. Not that Mark would know anything about that, but there’s a fond warmth in his chest. And that, Mark thinks, is proof that everything has turned out just fine.

 

**Author's Note:**

> i am addicted to summer break/beach fics. i'm probably going to write another one and it'll be exactly the same as this but i don't care uwu
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/idoldimples) || [cc](https://curiouscat.me/conclusions)


End file.
